Days afield on Staten Island

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DAYS AFIELD

ON

STATEN ISLAND

BY

WILLIAM T. DAVIS

Copyright, 1892,
By WILLIAM T. DAVIS.

PREFACE

C F 1 FEW of the pages that compose this volume ap-
r"A peared in that short lived periodical, The Staten
-L -*- Island Magazine, but for the greater part they are
records of rambles made during the past several years.
Rambles that were made sometimes with Charles W.
Leng, when I assisted in that happily never-to-be-ended
task of discovering all the kinds of beetles that inhabit the
Island, that count in their legions so many hundred
species; or with Louis P. Gratacap, when we caused the
hours to be memorable to ourselves by our enthusiastic joy
in simply wandering afield. If it were possible for any
man to give utterance to the simple beauty of a sunny
day, the whole world would treasure the production, but
like an artist he falls far short of the original, and gives
but a faulty representation of matchless nature. We men-
tion a hill, a field and a butterfly, but we cannot make
them blend properly. Sometimes I think that he who
makes no notes, is the wiser man. There is, however,
certainly a fascination in simply collecting and keeping
a record of the ways of beasties. One's acquaintance
among them widens rapidly, yet beyond there is ever a
haze. We never become thoroughly acquainted with a
grasshopper or a butterfly, and in that array of plants that

2051009

inhabit the Island, individual rareties appear most unex-
pectedly, and prove themselves additions to that already
extensive catalogue compiled by the chief clerks of our
local flora.

Thus with some of the members of that collecting
and tramping fraternity, of which the Island possesses a
goodly number, I went afield, but more often I rambled
alone. Nature seems to speak more directly to a lone
rambler, and to a number of persons in company she
rarely says a word. Two, at most, can tread evenly the
same path, can be touched by the same sense, and echo to
each other with pleasant minor changes, the influences of
the way.

In character these pages are miscellaneous as were
the excursions they commemorate, and they might have
been much extended, but perhaps a small potion of an
untried compound will be preferred by the reader. It is
the fashion to condemn, and I do not expect the majority
to be at variance with that mood, but perhaps to some
loiterer by the hedge-rows, I may speak sincerely, and he
will prize the result of my humble effort to write something
of nature and old Staten Island. \V. T. D.

NEW BRIGHTON.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

FIRST SIGNS 6

AFTER THE SNOW 7

THE BENISON OF SPRING 13

SOUTH BEACH 19

BY THE RIPPLING SEA 49

THE OLD STONE HOUSE 57

TENANTS 64

NATIVE BROOKS 72

THE POND-MEADOW 84

THE PARKS 104

THE TURNPIKE ROAD Ill

REFLECTIONS ... ... 128

FIRST SIGNS.

»S soon as Spring, with its leaves and flowers,
Has made field and wood-land so pleasing,
Warming alike earth's heart and ours,

And the poor little brook that was freezing
As soon as Phoebe has reared her first young

As of years under eaves protecting,
The poplar its pollen and catkins wide flung
And light, trembling leaves, perfecting.

Then we see creeping o'er Nature's bright face

The first signs of Autumn advancing,
It may be a berry ahead in the race,

Itself and its kind enhancing;
It may be a leaf turned yellow at prime,

A late butterfly early appearing,
Or it may be that beat, beat, pulse like rhyme,

A cricket to cricket a-cheering.

AFTER THE SNOW.

THERE is a continuous song in the valley to-day.
The warm breath of Spring is borne on the south
wind and the snow fades fast on the hillside.
Everything is moving. The very road seems to be on the
run, glistening in the sunlight, and a bird perching on the
alder bushes jars the pollen from the catkins. It is pleas-
ant to hear the constant warble ; to get a cedar branch
and lie down on it in the warm sunshine and have the
little yellow flies come and make their toilet on the twigs.
They rub their heads with their forelegs, until the slender
necks seem nigh unto breaking. They look so comically
wise, so matter-of-fact, so business-like, one is almost
inclined to address them. How much does a cold, stormy
day or a sunny one signify to them ? It is their life or
death, it is their chance. The sun hidden for even an hour
behind a cloud has a greater potency in nature than we
commonly credit. The rise and fall of our health and
vigor — our spirits — go up and down like the mercury in a
thermometer, and passing clouds, sunshine and cold, have
much to do with it. So, with the flies, we must have
courage, be satisfied with the hour. They rub their heads
and scrape their feet in comfort, and nothing that we can
do will bring us any greater advantage than this.

8 . After the Snow.

The crows step about circumspectly in the open. The
snow-birds sing a quaint little warble. Sometimes, as if by
mutual agreement, they fly from the ground where they
have been hunting, to the trees, and one sees that they are
on the constant watch for enemies. Their flesh-tinted bills
show plainly against their slate-colored heads and upper
breast, and all the day they may linger about a single
patch of woods — under the pines and cedars. Their
colors are intensified now ; a few, perhaps from ill-health,
are not quite so bright as the others. When they come to
drink at a pool only six feet away, their attire seems
quaintly neat. It is impressive that nature makes a thou-
sand coats that agree in stripe and feather, and also is
creative of countless variations of the same general form.

Nearly all of the pine seeds have fallen, but a few
remain at the base of the cones, tucked away mid the
lamellae. These the yellow-birds discover, pull them from
their hiding, take the seeds from their clasps, and the
" wings " come falling down. If a cone is rapped sharply
the perfect seeds tumble out, falling at first quite fast, until
the rotary motion reaches its maximum, when they go
spinning around, looking much like flying insects — day-flies
with gauzy wings. A shot, that was perhaps aimed at a
robin, falls from the cone with the seeds. It started on its
journey with much noise and smoke, and now, six months
after, completes its course and drops gently to the ground.

This morning the hill-side was white with the snow,
but now there are only patches left, and their edges move
like the hands of a clock. We look away and then look
back again, after a time, and see that they have moved,

After the Snow. 9

that the little white patch has shrunken, but we cannot see
it done, for the " speed is but the heavy plummet's pace."
An occasional beetle appears on the snow, running about
in much haste, its black body showing plainly. The pro-
tective coloring is at fault there, but it resents all interference
with a strong-odored, acrid secretion, which taints the
fingers long afterward. The wasps fly out from their
winter hiding, and seek the open places where the grass is,
but they are weak, and when you come near they make
several efforts, fall on their sides, and finally, with much
labor, fly away.

A pair of bluebirds, looking for a home, find the old
hollow tree in the field. They call constantly to each
other, and the male seems to think that most any place
will do. He pokes his head into a hollow and calls
ardently to his mate, and when she comes he flutteis
about on the branch and utters an almost squeaking cry.
But the madam is more particular, and flies away after a
moment's examination. What a noble use nature makes
of many artificial things ! The wild woodbine climbs the
fence and the caterpillars spin their cocoons there, or hang
in chrysalis from the rails, and when a bluebird calls to its
mate from a telegraph wire it bears truly a message of
love. His voice is mild, and is in sympathy with the
more kindly human messages that are carried unknown to
him by the wire beneath his feet. He seems to have been
born a gentleman, to be incapable of any meanness, and
he has much of " that inbred loyalty unto virtue." You
fancy that he is strictly honest, and is not on speaking
terms with the wily crow.

10 After the Snow.

An old man comes across the field with a hand-saw
and a ladder. He talks about the day — " how sunny it
is," and that he is going to cut cedar limbs for the cows ;
they like something green. While they come up and rub
their noses against him, he tells their names : that Lesa
was born on Inauguration day ; that he " brought her up
like a baby, fed her by hand, because her mother was
sick," and that on the 4th of March this year she had her
third calf. Though Lesa is trustful of him, he is plotting
against her offspring, and asks concerning a butcher that
might buy it, for " it is now three weeks old." Soon the
application of the proper name for one of the three roan
cows becomes a question, and we ask for enlightenment.
" Don't you see Hannah is bigger than Jane, higher, Jane
is two months older, though, and Lesa has the broken
horn." The old man goes down the hill to the cedars,
the cows go running after, and he every now and then
slaps them with the flat of the saw, to keep them at a
proper distance, and when the cedar-limb falls off its
foliage is devoured with evident satisfaction.

The purple tiger-beetles fly along the wood-paths ; the
honey-bees congregate where the sap oozes from the
stumps of trees cut down in the winter, and the damp piles
of cordwood give off a strong, pleasant fragrance — 'tis
the odor of vegetable blood. A beautiful deep orange,
black, and brown moth flies in numbers in the young
growth, every now and then resting on a branch-tip, for
Brephos infans comes on the warm days in March, with
the lingering snow.

The male wood-frogs are numerous in the pools, and

After the Snow. 11

their croaking sounds like a number of men calking a ship,
striking at variance with one another. Or perhaps we
should say that the calking of a ship sounds like the
croaking of wood-frogs, for the latter is the more natural
sound, and has the advantage of priority. Before Noah
made his boat of gopher-wood, and Jason sailed the
^Egean sea, the wood-frog sang in the Spring of the year.
In the woods, a long way from the pool, a female frog
comes hopping, hopping — two long leaps and then a rest.
So she makes her way to the general assemblage of her
kind. When you stoop to pick her up she crouches closer
to the earth, and her colors are brighter now than at any
other season. The red-brown is intensified, and the dark
stripe on either side of the head is more marked. The
majority of the males are dark mottled brown, with broader
stripes on the head, but a few are of the same general
color as the females. All of the spawn is deposited in a
space about a yard square, and in this one pool there are
over fifty of the round gelatinous masses adhering to the dead
grass- stems and twigs. Soon the assemblages will disperse,
and the frogs will sing no more; they will lead solitary
lives until another year.

In a swamp a cardinal bird sings from a tree-top, first
one and then the other of his songs : chuck — chuck — chuck,
rendered fast, as if calling the chickens; and hue, hue, hue,
repeated about a dozen times, bringing an echo from the
opposite hill. The notes have a particular whistling
sound, like a switch passed rapidly through the air, which
our words cannot render, and for which the cardinal alone
knows the alphabet. From the same swamp a peeper-

12 After the Snow.

frog is calling, and we think of the gray December days
when we heard him sing, and how all Winter he has lain
securely in his cold bed.

All along the hills at sunset the song-sparrows are
singing, and the chew, chew, chew, of the tufted titmouse
sounds from the higher trees. The sparrows are numerous
mid the young growth by the fences, and hide behind the
close clumps of blackberry stems, or hop so rapidly as to
appear to run along the ground. Though they quarrel
sometimes most desperately, yet their present twitterings
seem to indicate a great store of serenity, and you imagine
that if you could always wander by these sunny hedge-
rows and through the woods, nature would also bestow
upon you this same mild tone.

THE BENISON OF SPRING.

HESE Spring days, when we hear the bluebirds carol,
and mark the revivifying influence of the season, we
are sure to be affected thereby, and my companion
smiles to see me dance beneath the pine tree. " You seem
happy," he says, and yet I notice the light kindle in his
own eyes, for the sunshine, the bluebirds and the robins
have not come in vain to him.

What a blessing are the balmy hours of Spring ! The
warm sun distills a fragrance from the earth, and in the
waste pastures, where there is a thick mat of vegetation,
this odor is particularly strong. Nature is stirring straw-
berries and crickets into life. The air is full of little flies,
beetles run along the roadway, dogs lie asleep on the grass
and the yellow flicker sounds his rattle in the trees. Then
does the light within burn brightest, and our hearts seem
to beat more joyously than they have all Winter long, and
we are happy and at least transiently well under the sun.
Old Sol smiles at our ways ; we are flies on the sunny side
of a pumpkin to him, and to ourselves we know not what
we are.

14 The Benison of Spring.

It is a blessing to retain the simple delights of child-
hood, to be easily pleased, and it is well to be affected by
the greening of the earth, even though we cannot exactly
mention the charm or tell why we should be glad. It is
no wonder that there have been May-poles, no wonder
that the shepherds of old danced about the straws in the
field at the feasts of Pales, and no wonder again that my
companion and I become joyous in the hopeful days of
Spring.

The poet straightway goes to his garret and commences
writing verses. He must, at least, have his outburst of
vernal song — it, too. is one of the signs of the season. The
red maples are aglow, the pussy willows invite the bees
and those big burly flies, with hairy bodies, that fly with
ponderous inaccuracy. The marsh marigolds spread their
yellow flowers, and the hermit thrush sits silently on the
trees, his shadow cast, mayhap, in some dark, leaf-laden pool.

The skunk-cabbage spathes have long had their heads
above the surface, and when I see them I think of Cad-
mus and the dragon's teeth. They are spotted, are brown,
yellow, red and olive-green, and have long twisted apices
sometimes, like the ends of the caps in which fairies are
occasionally depicted. Withal they have a mysterious ap-
pearance, as if the dragon's teeth were sprouting. I see
where they have been dug up, for these queer mythical
things are in favor on Fifth avenue. The false hellebore
is also ever a surprise as it springs from among the brown
dead leaves. It has so early a tropical splendor, and the
Spring does not seem old enough to have given birth to
such luxuriant vegetation.

The Benison of Spring. 15

We meet an old man along the road and he tells us
how he's had a cold all Winter. " If I could onlv have
gone South," says he, "but what can a poor man do?"
But now it is Spring, and he straightens himself up and
looks brighter. A dose of Spring cures many a malady.
If we wait long enough the Earth transports us from the
pole to the equator, and we finally get thawed. We shed
our overcoats — our outermost cuticle comes off — and may-
hap the moths wear it all Summer. Thus do we greet the
warm days, and hope grows with the radishes in the gar-
den.

Alas, our best health, the most robust condition that
many of us ever attain, would be considered by some a
state needing a doctor's care. Our ills fit us after a while
like old clothes. Life hangs by a thread, and even that is
seldom a whole one. Several of its strands are commonly
broken ; we patch them together and put a porous plaster
over the weak spot. Thus do we live, being half dead.

But Spring is a blessing; we become more sprightly
than usual, and he must be old and miserable, indeed, who
does not glow a little when he sees the violets, the ane-
mones, the adders' tongues, and hears the sweet cadence
of the field sparrow's song. Why is it that they look up
to Heaven when they sing ? I suppose it may be ex-
plained in some mundane way that will give no credit to
spiritual feelings ; but certainly it is a pretty form of the
chippie's and of this bunting of the pastures.

I must not forget the dandelions that star the grass all
over, for they are truly the flowers of our balmy days, and,
indeed, they are not happy if the sun does not shine, for

16 The Benison of Spring.

they keep their bright yellow faces from dark and sullen
skies. Again, when the Spring is gone, and Summer is
gone, and the trees glow with their crimson leaves, or,
mayhap, have lost them entirely, how cheering is the bright
yellow face of the dandelion, as it nestles on its short stem
in some sheltered nook ! It hugs the earth then, as if it
suspected Winter, and does not grow as fearlessly as the
spring-time flower.

But we must hasten back to Spring, for indeed it is in
haste itself, and will be too quickly passed. My companion
says: " Do not let us have June right away, for then it is
July and then Autumn, and then our year is gone." So we
hasten back to Spring, to the blood-root blossoms, to the
arbutus and the bluets.

The rhubarb comes up quite gaily in the garden and
commences to spread its elephant-eared leaves. It is true
it has been peeping forth this long time, seeing, perhaps,
whether it was safe to come yet ; but the early days of
April in this clime bid no plant trust in the morrow. So
it has been content to wait, and it is only just now that it
has decided to push upward its rose-colored stalks. But
the old pear-tree has a greater show, and, I believe, if a
man could live two hundred years and retain his eyesight,
he would stand every Spring to admire the pageant ot
blossoms. It has looked dull and half-dead all Winter,
and you might have cut it down for firewood, but now it
seems a sacrilege to break even one of its branches. The
warblers come and tarry among its blossoms, and help,
with their bright colored bodies, to make a more splendid
show.

The Benison of Spring. 17

How gaudy Nature is ! Mankind would fain bedizen
itself with the most splendid attire, but it only manages to
steal a little of her magnificent raiment. With the onrush
of spring blossoms come the gaily-decked hats, the bees
even mistaking them occasionally for Nature's flowers,
such pains have been taken to imitate her ; but alas you
may sometimes see an Autumn blossom peeping forth from
the wealth of cowslips. I know that Cybele and Ceres do
now and then get sadly mixed, do bring forth willow-
pussies, dandelions, violets and other Spring flowers in De-
cember and January, and the old pear-tree occasionally
produces a few blossoms in October, so I suppose the
human sisters of Flora and her kin are amply excused for
jumbling the seasons.

There is a happy languor that accompanies the days
of Spring, and people loll in the sun or sit lazily on the
piazza, and then stretch themselves like the pussy that has
taken her nap before the fire. This pleasant tiredness is
called " spring fever," and would that our ailments were
all so welcome. It was the only disease known in the gar-
den of Eden during the spring-time of our race, and with
our love for the beautiful in nature, is a heritage from that
golden age.

The greening of Spring is certainly the nearest we
know to an absolute creation, so many things are new
about us. The old year and its countless predecessors are
back of it all no doubt, yet the new dress covers the old
so skillfully that the brown and dead leaves and decaying
branches that bestrew the ground do not seem to intrude
upon the scene.

18 The Benison of Spring.

My companion has told me in Spring that he has seen
the little blue butterflies, has told it as a piece of news, as
one of those signs of the season for which we watch and
wait. Of all the tokens these little blue butterflies, flitting
among the yellow flowered benzoin bushes, touch the sense
of our joy in the season most deeply, unless, indeed, it
may be those first twitterings of swallows. They are truly
divine birds and do make the season glad, and the farmer
hails them with pleasure when they return to his barn.
They speak, in their ways, a pleasant trustfulness that is
flattering to cold-hearted man, of whom so many innocent
creatures are so justly afraid. They fly in and out of the
open barn-door and about the house, and show by their
marvelous flights how easily they could be away, yet they
return again to man's protection. I am afraid that the joy
the swallows bring, as they come with the genial days,
cannot be set down in commonplace words. When I see
them fly and hear their twitter, it seems to me that I am
not half expressive enough; there is something still to
say, and I look in strange bewilderment, realizing an ever-
unutterable influence.

SOUTH BEACH.

THERE is but one short stretch of sandy beach on
Staten Island, from which the shore rambler may
see the line where sky and ocean meet ; in all other
directions the view is bounded by New Jersey or Long
Island, and the waves come more gently to the shore.

It was along this South Beach that in 1676 Jasper
Bankers and Peter Sluyter wandered, the place being
quite a wilderness then, and their description of the herds
of deer, the wild turkeys and geese, cause one to-day to
read the account several times over, so interesting is the
narrative. They visited the Oude Dorp and the Nieuwe
Dorp ; made leg -wearying journeys around the creeks that
reach far inland, and found great difficulty in climbing the
steep tree-covered bank where Fort Wadsworth now
stands. No longer, indeed, do the moss-bunkers lie dying
by the thousands, as they describe, " food for the eagles
and other birds of prey," for though it might seem improb-
able to those not interested in the matter, yet it is true
that not only do the land animals fall year by year before
advancing civilization, but the life that ocean would seem
to hold so securely, is also being gradually stolen away.

20 South Beach.

When Thoreau lived on Staten Island in 1843, residing
with Mr. William Emerson on the Richmond road, he
rambled on this shore, and he tells us about the dogs that
used to bark at him as he tramped along. He says :
" 1 used to see packs of half- wild dogs haunting the lonely
beach on the south shore of Staten Island, in New York
Bay, for the sake of the carrion there cast up ; and I
remember that once, when for a long time I had heard a
furious barking in the tall grass of the marsh, a pack of
half a dozen large dogs burst forth on to the beach, pur-
suing a little one, which ran straight to me for protection,
and I afforded it with some stones, though at some risk to
myself; but the next day the little one was the first to
bark at me."

Mr. Aug. R. Grote, the naturalist, and author of some
pleasing poems, says in his " Check- List of North Ameri-
can Moths " : " What a range of thought one can run
over catching butterflies along the hedgerows. I come
back to my first surprise, when, as a boy, I caught Cicin-
delas on the south beach of Staten Island. I saw that
there were numerous questions hanging about unsolved as
I was bottling my captures."

Though these tiger-beetles still fly on the South Beach,
each July seeing their return, yet the scene has changed
considerably. Indeed we cannot ramble along the same
shore that Bankers and Sluyter and Thoreau did, for the
beach of a hundred, or even of fifty, years ago is now far
out under the waves. It has been estimated that each
century brings with it about twenty inches depression, and
owing to the flat character of the country, many acres of

South Beach. 21

woodland and field have been washed away. History
says the Elm Tree lighthouse received its name from a
tree of this kind growing, in 1840, beyond the end of the
present dock, which extends about four hundred feet into
the water. On an old map, published in 1797, this tree is
depicted as one of the landmarks, and before the days of
the lighthouse it served to guide vessels into the harbor.
On the map is written this inscription beside the figure of
the tree : " Large Elm tree Standing by the Shore a
Mark for Vessels leaving and going from New York to
Amboy, Middletown and Brunswick." Further along the
shore we have been shown two cedars in front of which
the old men used to play ball when boys, but the trees now
stand near the edge of the bank, which is crumbling away
a little each year.

It was not long ago that the boulevard was built, a
little up from the high-tide mark, and New Creek was
bridged, but in many places only a trace of the road now
remains. New Creek is very erratic as regards at least a
portion of its course, and previous to the winter of
1883-84 emptied a quarter of a mile or more to the south-
west of its present mouth. There was a great point
formed by its winding course, on which the ribbed Pecten
shells occurred in numbers. Each year this point grew
longer, until at last the stream flowed so slowly that in the
winter mentioned it froze up, and the upland became
flooded. When spring came the water broke through
straight to the ocean, and now another point is being
slowly formed.

In 1797 the creek is portrayed as emptying straight to

22 South Beach.

the ocean, without any accompanying point, but on the
maps of 1850, 1859, and 1872, the point is shown. On
the old map already referred to a line of trees is depicted
near the mouth of the creek, and probably there was a
considerable wood there. Now there remains a clump
of cedars, and the dead post oaks are ranged in rows, and
branches that belonged to trees of the same kind may be
pulled out of the peat, that in places forms little cliffs.
This peat was originally formed when the present shore
was a part of a salt meadow, and in its way is very inter-
esting, for it offers a secure retreat to many a tender-
shelled mollusk and timid crab. Pieces of it are con-
stantly being broken off, and roll with ceaseless roll, until
they mimic the most approved forms of the baker's loaves.
Cedar trees may also be seen dead or dying, their trunks
buried a foot or more in the sand, or the soil washed away
from their roots, which sprawl in a ghastly fashion mid
dead crabs and the wrecks of things that the ocean has
thrown away. What a marvelous hoard of dead creatures
the sea casts up to the land ! Many poor mussels that
seemed securely anchored in the morning, ere night are
dying on the shore. It seems useless to throw them back*
for the waves, with a roar, bring them again and cast
them at your feet.

On Winter tramps I meet the crows looking for cast
up treasures, and their success oftentimes is greater than
my own ; for many a fine " lady crab " or " decorator "
have I mourned over — sighed for the lost leg or missing
" apron." The gulls, too, rejoice at the death of the crab,
and in Winter they frequent in numbers the sandy points,

South Beach. 23

from which they rise with weird screams. They often sit
motionless in rows at low water line, apparently many of
them asleep, and when the tide rises they float on the
waves in nearly the same place where they were standing
before. A few of their cries sound remarkably like some
one hoisting a sail with the aid of a creaking pulley, and
1 have several times been deceived thereby, and have
looked about expecting to find a mariner close in shore.

Of all the shells that line the shore, mid " gingle shells,"
that rattle with a metallic sound, and " boat shells," whose
inner coloring is equal to anything in nature's art, there is
one of curious shape and delicate marking called the shell
of Pandora. Three faint lines radiate from one end of the
hinge over the pearly surface, and the valves are generally
found together, resisting storm and waves. There is a
little space between, for they are not usually tightly closed,
but Hope being so great a thing is still held as captive.
Thus is this shell most aptly named, and we peer within
to see what may be hidden there, and in the grains of sand
are our hopes and our fortunes portrayed, for perhaps to
the world the one is as important as the other.

On cold Winter days, as well as in Summer, a blind
man comes out, and, with a long stick feels carefully for
the drift wood. Oftentimes the small boys collect sticks,
and placing them in his path, watch him find them.

A hermit came to the shore a few years ago and built
his house of drift wood on the sand near the bridge, cover-
ing it with old tin and putting one small pane in the front for
a window. With the fish he catches, the gulls and ducks
that he shoots, and what can be found on the beach, he

24 South Beach.

gets a living, and pays no taxes. " A fellow must do
something," says he, " and so I came here and built my
house. I used to live over on Long Island." In the
morning the sun comes up from the sea in front of his
door, and at evening it sinks behind the western hills;
but no man conies to disturb the hermit. He is a stranger
to the rush and the set tasks of the world, and he is free,
where many are fettered.

Of drift wood there is no end, neither is there of old
shoes, mousetraps, brooms and all other household utensils.
Even coal and metal objects are washed ashore. I found
a table one day, with a full complement of legs, and a
friend discovered a coffee pot, cover and all, and with a
blameless bottom. One might become quite a connoisseur
in bottles, for the Frenchman, the German, the Italian and
the Irishman each throws his bottle overboard, and com-
ing ashore they mix with the American bottles on the
beach. So various in shape and general appearance are
they that one readily falls to giving them supposed quali-
fications, such as phlegmatic, sanguine and bilious bottles.
I have seen those that looked ill though full of medicine,
and they are certainly often very blue. Some have con-
tained " St. Jacob's Oil for man and beast," and others of
a very odd shape that appear to have more difficulty in
standing than most bottles, often protrude from the pock-
ets of amateur fishermen.

There is nothing with which the waves seem to take
more sport than with an empty barrel, and if the wind be
high its bouncings and tossings are wild and fantastic. It
rolls down the beach to meet the incoming wave, and

South Beach. 25

then, mid the foam, is sent on its journey up the strand
again. There is no scarcity of barrels on the beach, and
on Crooke's Point, which might be called the Cape Cod
of Staten Island, they form the sides of the well. Several
have been placed one above the other in the sand, and
fresh water accumulates at the bottom.

All fruits in their season find their way hither, and
ocean lays things side by side in strangest contrast. A
loaf of bread, some withered flowers, an old straw bed on
which, perhaps, a sailor died, often lie close together.
Maybe he took some of the nostrums contained in the
bottles scattered about, and they introduced his spirit to
the unknown shore.

Thus, when we wander along this sandy South Beach,
and see our foot-prints and think of the strange vagaries
that beset us, as Hawthorne did on his ramble along the
shore, other things come crowding before us too, and we
look at the houses, the bulkheads, the line of the proposed
railway, and think of the deer and wild turkeys in the
days of Bankers and his friend. Do we not then conclude
that however desirable civilization and all that it brings
may be, yet its presence in no way tends to beautify the
scene.

*

And now the years have sped on, a great portion of
the beach is changed, the long stretch of uninhabited
strand has been curtailed. Pleasure seekers abound on the
Summer days, and there is a laugh, a gayety, a gentle
splashing in the water, and a rumbling of the railroad
trains.

26 South Beach.

The unconscious sand is held at great price, and the
tiger beetles have been banished to further along the shore.
Waiters rush about with their trays, where once the crows
devoured the lady crabs, and the crowd is as lithesome and
gay as were the sand-fleas of old.

There are as many footsteps on the sand as on a city
pavement, and it is plain that it is not the beach, but the
people, that form the chief attraction — they come to see
one another. A stretch of the strand is their meeting-
place, while all beyond is vacant, where only a few fisher-
men or lone wanderers find enjoyment.

There is a particular type that discovers the beach most
congenial. Here his favorite beverage abounds, and he
enjoys himself hugely all day long. He is possessed of
much rotundity of person, his eyes are bulging, he is quite
certain he knows all about the world. His philosophy is,
that we live a little while, but are a long time dead. He
bets that he can throw a ring over a cane, or can hit the
bull's eye in the target, or one of the little tin birds that are
ever going round. The publicity of the whole matter is
what pleases him, and when he rides the deer or the polar
bear, in the merry-go-round, he waves joyously to the
crowd, and claps his hands to the music of the organ
behind the screen.

That wonderful cow with a tin udder, that curiously
enough fills her body to the exclusion of heart and lungs
and other less important matters, is very attractive. He
steps up and has some ice-cold milk, for this bovine is
providently organized for summer weather.

Someone bets him that he cannot send the weight in the

South Beach. 27

sledge-machine up to the bell, and he bets he can. He
grasps the heavy hammer confidently, and for once he is
right ; before his vigorous strokes the weight flies up and
the bell rings. After all of that exercise he does not resort
to the wonderful cow, but celebrates his success with lager
beer.

At night he goes home supremely happy; he sings on
the cars, and even dances a little. Mayhap the conductor
comes by and holds a quiet talk with the merrymaker, but
the official only produces a momentary quiet.

The simple blithe someness of such a soul — the boyish
manhood — is not without its pleasing aspect, and some-
times it is accompanied by an entertaining personality of
no mean order. Once while the train lay in the station,
the passengers crowding the smoker and the car adjoining,
a jolly party sang their songs. One large man sang
" Climbing up the Golden Stairs " in German, and with
one accord two car-loads ot passengers ceased speaking,
there was a perfect hush while he sang, such was the
power of sweet sounds.

In September, 1889, the swells of the sea visited the
" hotels " in person, and few of the houses escaped without
damage, some of them having their broad piazzas taken
away, for such was the rollicking dance of Neptune's
company. After nearly a week of dark and sullen skies,
when the sun seemed to have forgotten the earth, it came
at last, struggling through the clouds, and the workmen
appeared in numbers on the beach, and engaged them-
selves in repairing the damage caused by the breakers.
Among them was a young man with staring dark eyes,

28 South Beach.

that protruded far from his head, and had hardly a human
expression. There was more of the white visible than of
the colored iris, and the effect was ghastly — he looked to
have the soul of a demon. He was in a hole, adjusting a
post beneath a tottering bathing house, and I and another
man approached — I from curiosity to see the wild eyes,
which I had noticed on my way up the beach, and he to
inspect the progress of the work. But those frightful eyes
were truthful windows to a soul, and their possessor
demanded, with an oath, what we had come to see.

Beyond New Creek much of the old time quietness
still remains ; we may ramble as of yore and sniff the salt
breeze, and make a quiet loitering inspection of that won-
drous hoard of wreck that ocean has flung to the land.
The great value of these free gifts of the sea have always
been taken account of, and in the days of the Revolution,
in the announcement of the sale of the Seaman farm, the
beach and its wealth are not forgotten. The property is
described as " a valuable plantation that did belong to
Mr. Jaquis Poilloin, deceased, containing 190 acres,
exclusive of the beach and flats on the front of the said
farm, which will be included in the purchase, on which
comes great quantities of seaweed (a very valuable
manure)."

Even in the days of summer I have rambled for miles
without meeting anyone — have gone in bathing and sat on
a log and ate my lunch while I dried, the warm, gentle
breezes blowing about me. One day as I came upon the
beach from the meadows there were heavy black clouds in
the south, and a distant sound of thunder. Soon the sun

South Beach. 29

was hidden, and there were flashes of lightning. I hastened,
and, getting a few boards together, made a little shed
against a log, under which I placed my clothes — then I
went into the water. Soon the waves rose white-capped,
and I came ashore ; a small boat in the distance drew
down its sails and lowered its anchor. The sand was
blown so swiftly before the gale that it stung my unpro-
tected back ; then there came a lull, and then the rain — a
gentle summer shower. The drops pelting down on me
seemed cold, and they dug little pits in the sand, striking
it with much force. So long have we had umbrellas,
coats or sheepskins, and dwelt in houses, that to stand
thus unprotected in even a summer shower, is a memorable
experience. Anon the sun burst forth, and quickly dried
the sand and me ; and to look over the placid scene one
would have thought it unlikely that a few moments before
the leaves had been wrenched from the trees. The black
clouds went sailing off in the distance, the small boat drew
up its anchor and spread its sails, and the grasshoppers
sang again in the meadow.

The coming in and going out of the tide gives an extra
interest to the shore, and he that lives by adjusts much of
his daily employment to its rise and fall. He may go out
in the morning and find a chair or a neat little boat cast
up at his door, or maybe some poor fish that missed his
reckoning, and was thrown on the sand in consequence.
There is ever a newness, and you stand by expecting
something, just as the fishermen do who look in the
direction in which they cast their lines, though they can
see nothing but the waves. I have noticed that when

30 South Beach.

dogs are seated on the beach they generally look seaward,
too, and will often sit watching the horizon for a long time.

About thirty species of mollusks may commonly be col-
lected upon the beach, though many more have actually
been found there. The large collections of shells and
little stones, which are held together by the silken cords
with which the edible mussel attaches itself to all objects
within its reach, are fruitful places for research when cast
upon the shore, and there may be found the greatest
number of prizes. Also the large native sponges, that
come rolling in with the waves, contain many shells and
other animals that find in them protection and a home.

In a few days thousands of shells of one species will some-
times be cast ashore, and next week it may be a school of
fish or a countless multitude of crabs. Thus have I seen
the shore for long distances so covered with the recently
cast up shells of the sea, or skimmer clam, that "it was
impossible to walk without crushing them. The mole-crab
is also occasionally thrown ashore in great numbers,
forming a definite line along the beach where they have
been left by the highest wave.

It was the large shells of the skimmer clam that were
tied to sticks by the Indians, and used as hoes.

In September there are many kinds of fish in the
creek — young bluefish, killifish, and pipefish — each kind in
schools, and on the unprotected shore there is a certain
little fish with a silvery band on its side that swims in the
shallow water, going in and out with the waves. It comes
so close to the dry beach that I have succeeded in cap-
turing it with my insect net, which I slapped down upon

South Beach. 31

it as if it had been a butterfly. Further out from the shore
there are often large schools of fish, that make the water
dark for a space, and which may be individually distin-
guished as they are momentarily raised in a swelling wave
above the general level of the sea.

Many sandpipers run along the beach at certain seasons,
just at the edge of the waves, and sometimes the zig-zag of
their motions is remarkable. They look like little dancing-
machines, their movements are so rapid, and they turn at
such sharp angles in their pursuit of the sandhoppers. It
is fatal for a sand-flea to have rheumatism. One stormy
day I particularly observed four of these birds standing in
shoal water, and occasionally running their bills into the
sand. The tide was out, and they appeared to be less
active than usual, but stood about, scratched their heads
with their wet feet, preened their feathers, and looked like
four old men in gray coats standing solemnly together, with
their heads pulled down between their shoulders. One
of the number had but a single leg, but he nevertheless got
about quickly, and seemed well-grounded and sure-footed.
He would stand where the incoming wave washed against
him, and I could not detect that he even so much as
rocked on his frail support. The surviving leg was slanted
under his body from left to right, so as to make the center
of gravity fall in the proper place. One often hears the
reports of guns by the meadow-creeks and on the shore,
and sees the little clouds of smoke curl upward. It was
thus that the sandpiper lost his leg, but the rest of his body
was fortunate enough to fly away. In these days of pen-
sions, what is he to receive ?

32 South Beach.

The fishermen stand in a line along the beach, or sit
on empty barrels, or old baskets, or boxes, and often they
support their poles on uprights, and anxiously watch for
them to bend. They busy themselves about the fire, and
while one watches the poles another collects drift-wood to
feed it. Their lunch is spread out near by, and they dig a
hole in the sand wherein to put the apples and tomatoes,
thus keeping them from rolling down the beach. The fire,
with its crackle and blue curling smoke, and the captured
fish lying by, all remind you of a primitive simplicity, and
indeed it is this desire to live close, at least for one day, to
the essentials of a natural life that prompts many of the
men to visit the sea-shore. When seen at a distance, the
smoke from the fires tones admirably with the ocean tints,
and gives a pleasing haziness to the surroundings. Occa-
sionally the fires are made against a big beam, or a pile,
that has broken loose and drifted ashore, and these
immense pieces of wood becoming ignited, burn with a
dull sullenness long after the rest of the fire has gone out.
These are pleasant places to tarry on the cold days, when
the wind blows across the meadows from the north, and
you may even sit on the beam and hang your hands over,
near the glowing embers. The fire imparts an inde-
scribable character to the wood; the beam that smokes
seems to be essentially different from the others along the
shore, and you discover yourself regarding it as half alive.
But be very circumspect as to the logs, the driftwood, and
pieces of old vessels, that you sit upon. On the warm
days different substances — tar, pitch, resin, and their
various combinations which give to a vessel a peculiar and

South Beach. 33

not unpleasant odor — stew out of these logs that lie on
the hot sand Though it is very easy to sit down upon
them, yet it is not so easy often to get away at the precise
moment you desire, and for a time you are like Theseus or
Pirithous on the wayside stone in the land of Shades.

When the tide is low, the peat-cliffs, that rise a yard
or more above the sand below their perpendicular fronts,
form convenient stations from whence the fishermen cast
their lines. The placid and shallow pools that remain
between the tides on the peat-beds are most trans-
parent, and usually some living creature is entrapped in
the larger of them, and has to await the return of the
waves to regain his liberty. There are also many sea-
weeds in the pools that deck them out in bright array, and
while you peer in at the marvels that are hidden there you
may hear the water splashing in a miniature fall over the
peat-cliff, as the pool is gradually drained away. The peat
is not over a foot or two thick in most places, and under it
is a layer of clay containing innumerable water-worn
pebbles. Many of them are of brown sandstone, and it is
from this source that the pebbles that line the immediate
upshore come, and from which much of the beach to the
eastward is entirely free. There is also a great number
of edible mussel shells at this part of the shore, and
they crackle under your feet as you walk along, and here
it is that the crows pay regular visits, for the mussels and
soft-shell clams are favorites with them. Not only do the
empty shells lie about the logs high on the beach, where
the crows have taken them, but they are also found far
inland, in the most central portions of the island. Some-

34 South Beach.

times in the midst of the ferns and woodland vegetation,
when you least expect to find a denizen of the sea, you
come upon the empty valves of a soft-shell clam. An
interesting feature connected with the life-history of this
clam is the effect which the character of the beach exerts
upon the shells. On the sandy shore, where the resistance
is not great and about equal in all directions, the shells are
thin and evenly developed, and are often very beautiful in
form and color; but on the rocky shores of the island,
where the conditions are not so favorable, the shells are
distorted to fit the apertures in which they have grown.
On the peat they are even more deformed than on the
stony shore, and there are also many of a rounded form,
the peat acting as a hard-pan, preventing them from
burying deeply, and the constant scraping along its surface
of drift material breaks the upper ends of the shells. The
ribbed mussel also abounds in places on the peat, and I
have sometimes found it difficult to secure perfect speci-
mens, owing to the shells being broken on the edges from
the cause already mentioned.

In several places on the surface of the peat there are
evidences of ditches having been dug in years agone;
perhaps most of them were made when the shore was a
portion of the meadow. In a few instances they may be
property lines, and not originally constructed for the more
ordinary purpose of drainage. Now they are washed by
the waves, the "property" is gradually being devoured,
and they serve as channels wherein the sea may swash
and swirl in that menacing playfulness that is often its
mood.

South Beach. 35

Gradually the incoming ride forces the fishermen who
are not protected by rubber boots, or who have not dis-
carded artificial coverings to their feet, to seek the drier
up-shore, and it is then, while the waves break in the cav-
ernous recesses that they have worn in the face of the low
cliffs, that the little fires of drift-wood are most welcome.

In certain localities wild beans grow in abundance on
the up-shore, beyond the reach of the tide, and in Septem-
ber a great number may be gathered in a short time. The
Indians picked them when they were here, and cooked
them in their earthen vessels, and I, in these later days,
have cooked them also. They have a curious tang — a
concentrated bean flavor — but are not distasteful, and if it
were not for Limas, the Valentines and the other cultivated
varieties, we would be glad to get the wild Phaseolus.

At the commencement of the Point, and in places be-
fore you get so far along the beach, the shore is higher at
the flood-tide mark than the contiguous meadows, and
every now and then in the Spring and Fall, and occa-
sionally during storms at other seasons, the waves wash
entirely over the beach. There is in consequence a bank
of sand — a sort of sandy wave that gradually rolls over
the low-lying meadows, and you may see the cedar-trees
standing dead, and, as it were, knee-deep in the sandy in-
undation.

In one place on the shore there stands a few cedar and
cultivated cherry trees in a row, and they probably mark
the site of an old fence, but all other evidences of the line
are now obliterated by the sand. Where there is a growth
of smilax, small cedars or any other thick and low vegeta-

36 South Beach.

tion, it will for a short time protect the meadow immedi-
ately behind it, and thus occasionally there is a low place
on the upland side of one of these clumps, where the cat-
tails still grow, while all about it will be sand.

The line is generally well denned between this barren
waste and the fertile meadow, and close to its threatening
edge grow the golden-rods and asters, whose roots by next
year will probably be deeply buried. The purple and the
green stemmed stramoniums find the sandy wastes to their
liking, and particularly just along its edge often grow lux-
uriantly. The beach-grass follows the sand, and the little
tufts that spring from the subterranean rhizoma all stand
in a row and look like some queer feathery little soldiers
marching across a sandy desert. There are sometimes
quite complete circles described about these clumps of
grass that stand alone, for being buffeted about by the
wind, marks are left in the sand of their furthest reach
in every direction. Some days the wind roars across the
beach, and if you have a companion you must needs put
your head close to his and shout loudly in order to make
him hear. Then the sand is lifted off the up-shore, where
it is dry, and comes flying against your face, and it does
not do to turn the eyes in the direction from whence it
comes. If the wind is from the north or northwest the
spray from the waves is blown seaward again in great
clouds, the gulls clang their doleful cries, and there is a
grim seriousness in the scene that lives long in the memory.
The hills, viewed from the shore across the intervening
lowland, give you the impression of life, as if somehow
the ridge that you saw in the distance was the dorsal

South Beach. 37

crest of some monstrous beast. It seems to be quietly
slumbering there ; to be dark and gray in Winter and in
Spring to suddenly change its color, like a chameleon.

The wind also blows the sand off the deposits of black
and slightly cemented iron-sand. These sheets are very
thin and brittle, and it is seldom that one of any consider-
able size can be lifted by the hand from the place where
it was formed.

On the Point there are many cedars, and near the house
once stood a number of Lombardy poplars ; but they have
nearly all been cut down. It is said that the wind made
too much noise "roaring in their branches;" they were so
high and lithe that they responded to every breeze, and so
ailanthus trees were planted near the house and the poplars
felled. There are some very old bay bushes that have
grown twelve feet high and proportionally robust in trunk,
and under them the fowls congregate. The rooster may
crow ever so lustily on the Point, and only be answered by
the dismal cry of a seagull, for all the tones of defiance
from the mainland come attempered by the breeze, and the
chanticleers themselves would not know what to think of
the far-away sound. Even the European or English spar-
rows do not often make their way thither, but the native
song-sparrow is quite domestic, and hops about among the
hen-coops or perches on their tops.

Years ago a few cultivated blackberry bushes grew
near the house, and when in fruit they were tied with dang-
ling shingles. Some poor catbird, in passing over the
Point, always found these few bushes most tempting and
tarried awhile — hence the shingles. Rabbits, too, frequent

38 South Beach.

the vicinity, and in Winter, after the ground is covered with
snow, their tracks are innumerable. But one rabbit is very
industrious in track-making, and it is surprising how many
places he has a mind to visit, thus leading you to believe
that a great number have been about the hen-coops.

The dunes on the Point run parallel and near to the
shore on the south side, and it is pleasing to walk through
the little vales that separate them. Often the evening prim-
roses are conspicuous there, and the lowly camphor weed,
the prickly pear and the gray and sombre hudsonia find
favored situations. But I should not call the hudsonia
gray and sombre, for though it appears during eleven months
of the year that the earth has brought forth a grizzly and
shaggy coat that seems about to wither and die away, yet
in June and the latter part of May it decks itself in yellow
blossoms, and shows that latent vitality that is ever so
surprising in nature. Syneda graphica, a pretty moth, with
marbled wings of yellow, of gray and of brown, frequents
these patches of hudsonia twice a year, for its caterpillars
probably feed upon it, and Utetheisa bella, that orange and
white moth, with showy pink hind wings, also flies in num-
bers in the vicinity.

The beach-plums are a great attraction to a shore ram-
bler, and the bay-berries to the white-breasted swallows
that congregate on the Point in great flocks. It is believed
to be a weather sign, this vast gathering of birds, for it is
said that when the swallows visit the bay-berry bushes a
storm is near. The branches of the bay often bend under
their united weight, and the dark glossy blue of their backs
make the group resplendent in color. On other portions

South Beach. 39

of the island they may, in the late Summer and Fall days,
be seen winging their way shoreward in the morning, fly-
ing irregularly as if catching insects by the way, and at
evening the flocks return northward. It is nothing for a
swallow to feed on the bay-berries by the sea shore and fly
far inland to roost.

You would hardly suspect, in walking along the sand,
that many of the clumps of bay bushes were connected
one with another by subterranean branches ; but when this
is once discovered it will also be observed how they, like
the tufts of beach grass, often stand in line. These root-
stocks are most marvelously contorted and interlaced, and
it is no uncommon matter to find one that has doubled
completely on its course. They are covered with a silvery
yellow bark, like that at the base of the white birches, and
many of them are over two inches in diameter and extend
a number of feet, giving rise, as has already been said, to
several clumps of upright, leaf-bearing branches. Thus do
the bay bushes stand together in the sandy waste, and as
the waves eat into the dunes, those that are furthest inland
support for a little while the outermost member of their group.

There is a very thin subsoil of a blacker hue than the
sand, and it is the highway to which many of the roots
adhere. When the ocean covers it with several feet of
cast-up shells and sand, and a pit has been dug into these
several layers, then does the narrow black seam and its
accompanying roots show most plainly.

Hawks fly about slowly over the dunes, close to the
tops of the bushes. Mice are ever running in and out
among the tussocks of grass, and the silent winged hawk

40 South Beach.

steals upon them unawares. Then, too, the great blue
herons visit the unfrequented meadows, and stand sentinel
there. The white herons used to come also, and the fann-
ers and fishermen will tell you about them ; but now they
have ceased to visit the shore, or, at most, are a great
rarity. Though the herons are imposing, and you feel
that the earth still has a great bird when you see them fly,
yet those ever busy, cawing crows, that meddle with the
meadow hen's eggs, and incur the scoldings of the marsh
wrens, are of more general interest. It is said that they
used to be seen in vast numbers flying to their roost among
the cedars on Sandy Hook. That in its day was one of
the great crow roosts of the vicinity.

There are several wrecks along the beach, not those of
recent years, but remains of old crafts that went to pieces
long ago. What with the gradual washing away of the
shore and the ever-busy sandmen, who land their schoon-
ers and sail away with portions of the Point, these wrecks
have been exposed. I have stood in wonderment on the
old water-worn sides of one of these hulks, whose iron
bolts, eroded by time, encrusted the planking for many
inches about their heads with a cement of iron, of pebbles
and of sand ; and the planking itself was eaten and worn
and carved by the sea. Those feathery little sea plants
that seem so incapable of withstanding the force of the
waves, and yet are really so tough and strong, floated in
the incoming tide; and the port-holes, through which
murderous cannon had once shown their iron faces, looked
peaceful enough, manned by barnacles and fringed by the
soft, waving green weeds.

South Beach. 41

Perhaps it was in the days of the Revolution when this
cruiser went ashore, and HYLER, that tormenter of the
British stationed on the island, was responsible for her
destruction. But it is just as likely to have been the other
way, for the old wreck and the waves can tell nothing of
the fortunes of war.* No doubt they were rough, brawl-
ing men who manned this war vessel — men who lived to
eat, to drink, to fight and to swear; but they were hardly
tougher customers than those who sail the sand-boats ot
to-day. Great brawny fellows are many of these, that ab-
sorb nearly as much fresh oxygen and sunlight through
their skins as a Hottentot, for they wear in Summer hardly
more clothes than the African. A flannel shirt and draw-
ers, that are often sieve-like in character, complete their
apparel, and, bare-footed and bare-headed, they wheel the
sand aboard the schooners, and for each voyage they re-
ceive five dollars. The captain, perhaps, is slightly fuller
dressed and may own the boat ; if not, he receives seven
dollars per trip. At half-tide they get the schooner close
in to the shore, and place wooden horses from the vessel's
side to the up-beach, and on these planks are laid. It is
the custom for the captain, if he works, to walk off first,
with his wheelbarrow, followed by the crew, and when the
captain's barrow is full it is expected that each man will
have his fully laden also, so that he may precede the cap-
tain up the plank. Thus, while the men dig, they keep an
eye to the skipper, and lag or hasten as the exigencies of

* What remained of this wreck was broken up in the storm of Oct-
ober, 1890. At the same time great changes were wrought in the
shifting sand of the beach.

42 South Beach.

the situation seem to demand. It takes them commonly
five or six hours, according to the number of the crew and
the size of the vessel, to complete the cargo.

If they do not intend to pay for the sand, that is, have
the amount collected from the vessel in New York, where
she is usually registered, the crew is large, and they lay
several planks from the schooner to the up-shore, and work
with the greatest diligence. One day I came upon a crew
of this description, and overheard their comments as I
approached, one of them declaring that I looked remark-
ably like a missionary. A member of the group had a
guilty conscience, and I heard the others rallying him that
I had come to spy him out. As it was late in the Fall
they had donned their coats, but that same party-colored,
harlequin-like attire worn in Summer was still in vogue,
and one long-legged, thin fellow, with vermilion drawers
and black coat, was particularly conspicuous as he walked
up the plank.

It is related that a German, who lived down the beach
some years ago, seeing the sand-boatmen wheeling his
property aboard, went to collect the dollars that he thought
were due him. But the sand-men didn't view it in the
same way, and, calling him a Dutchman, with flourishes,
whacked him severely with their shovels, until he was glad
to part with his sand and their blows.

While waiting for the tide, the crews that have finished
loading walk about the beach, split wood or lie on the sand,
and if another sloop is being laden nearby, as sometimes
happens, they watch the proceeding with evident interest.
Then do they talk of what pleases them in life and what

South Beach. 43

they regard as its unpleasantries, the merits ot the schoon-
ers, the captains and such matters. Above all do they
discuss the purchasing power of the five dollars they are
about to receive, when applied to the market value of beer
and whiskey. A flaxen-haired giant of this description,
who might have played with us as Otus or Ephialtes, for
his muscles stood out large and strong, stood on the beach
one day and lamented, in terms that would fill this page
with dashes, the fact that he was minus all cash. A good
specimen of anything — a resplendent flower, or even a big
toad — is pleasant to gaze upon, and so this muscular youth,
with his vivacious glances and rollicking ways, was a vig-
orous scion of the race, and admirable for his hardihood.

Such characters, no doubt, were the buccaneers of old
days, who sailed the sea about the Point and landed on the
shore, and who, it is said, buried money on the banks of
Bass Creek. Perhaps even the burly, copper nosed Yan
Yost Vanderscamp and his roistering followers from the
" Wild Goose," at Communipaw, landed on this strand.

About eighteen hundred and twenty or thirty, men
came for several successive years at Christmas time, and
taking sight from a rock exposed at low-water, dug a long
trench, and it is believed that they finally found the treas-
ure, for remnants of tarred canvas and pieces of an old
box were discovered in the trench which they had dug.

Crooke's Point was formerly known as Brown's Point,
and on the old map of the island, already referred to, it is
denominated a " Beach of Sand." Bass Creek is laid
down on this and subsequent maps as of considerable pro-
portions, but now only vestiges of it remain, it being nearly

44 South Beach.

obliterated by the sandy waves. This old map also makes
the Point about three-eighths of a mile at its greatest
breadth; but it is much less than that now, and, ere long,
it will be " Crooke's Island," instead of Point. The waves
have left but a narrow neck of sand only two or three yards
wide in one place, and over this they often wash to the
reedy meadows that lie between the beach and the Great
Kill.

There are several lanes that lead from the upland across
the meadows to the shore, and muddy, swaley roads are
they. The cattails grow high at their sides, and nearer
to the shore the taller varieties of salt meadow grass. One
of these long, straight lanes, ditched on either side, has
always left a pleasing memory picture, with the several
hummocks over which it passed, where stood the gnarled
wind-torn apple-trees, and where grew a few cabbages
surrounded by a fence. I never saw anybody working
there, and they might have been grown by the sea-gods or
by some wild man of the moors, for all that appeared to
the contrary. From my seat under the haystack I could
see a lone tree in the distance, that bore a crow's nest in
its branches, and the occasional splashing of a musk-rat in
the creek nearby, the chirp of a song-sparrow or the
squeak of a meadow mouse, indicated the life that was near.
The shad-frogs are common on the meadows at times, and
the easy-going toad also comes down to the sea.

Oft have I watched for a long while the soldier-crabs,
or " fiddlers," that abound along the creek. I take it
that life cannot be very dull to them mid so much socia-
bility, they are so neighborly. In retreating to their holes

South Beach. 45

they do not always leave the big claw outermost, but
sometimes go in with that claw first. They feed themselves
with the little claw, often picking the mud, etc., from off
the big one and putting it into their mandibles. Those
with small claws only, feed themselves with both, first with
one and then with the other, and seem to get on much
faster than the others. At some seasons there is no quar-
reling among them, though they will lock their large claws
occasionally, but do not pinch. Again, in the Spring, I
have seen the males quite belligerent, many of them with
their large claws interlocked, and so enraged that I have
picked them up without their loosening their hold. Often,
too, have I put several individuals into one hole and had
them retire, nor do they speedily show themselves again,
though so strangely situated. It is comical to see them
bring their long, stalked eyes to bear upon you. " We are
looking at you," they seem to say.

It is best when you come to a wet place in the meadow
to run through it as fast as you can — to jump with judg-
ment, but rapidly — for "if you stop to look after each step
the water soaks into your shoes. The meadow-grass hides
a deal of moisture, and you slump into a depression or a min-
iature creek before you are aware. Thus do I remember fall-
ing in to a ditch, for being preoccupied, looking at the Hele-
nium flowers, I did not observe what the rank vegetation
concealed until I was knee-deep in water. How surprised
we are at getting suddenly soused ; one would think that
water was a new element to us.

With an old piece of bamboo from the shore, or a tree-
branch from the upland, to serve as a jumping-pole, you

46 South Beach.

may often get over the wet places in the lane tolerably
well ; and if, mayhap, your shoes get wet, run in the grass
awhile on some dry knoll or ridge, for the grass will dry
your shoes quite speedily.

I remember one cold, bright, windy day, as I came
along the beach, seeing one of the Hermit's dogs tugging
at the remains of an old white horse that lay on the sand.
The dog stood with his legs braced and pulled at the
tough, hard skin with all of his strength, but when he saw
me, he ran across the bridge, casting an occasional sullen
look behind. Then there was a general barking, and fhe
four or five dogs made a rush for me — came bounding up
on the end of the bridge, but I greeted them as a friend,
and they concluded to regard me in that light, though I do
not think their first intention was so kindly. Soon I had
them growling at one another as each tried to get a larger
share of the caresses I so lavishly bestowed.

Near by there was a stack of hay, and I sat myself
down on its sunny side to eat lunch while the north wind
blew. At one end of the stack there was a second white
horse, a forlorn, decrepit animal, and probably the survivor
of some hackman's team, whose other member I had seen
lying dead. As I ate my crackers and bread and orange I
could hear the horse grinding his provender, and when I
returned, three hours later, he was still eating. There he
stood, with his eyes half closed, and slowly munched the
hay, while the north wind cast his shaggy coat into
ridges.

It seems useless to describe natural scenery when every
one may see it if they will, but the very color of the beach,

South Beach. 47

swept smooth by the broom of the ocean every twelve
hours, and the yellow-brown tints of the meadow-grass in
Autumn, tempt you to stop and to gaze. When all of this
is spread out into acres, and into miles, and you recline,
half dreaming, on a dune, and the pleasant wonderment
of the scene steals into your mind, mayhap the tears will
stream down your face. Yet you know not why the
common scene affects you so, and that you should feel
that sadness that seems akin to heavenly joy.

" It is a view of delight," says Lucretius. " to stand or
walk upon the shore-side, and to see a ship tossed with
tempest upon the sea . . . " ; so, likewise, it is pleas-
ant on the hazy and foggy days to hear the horns of the
unseen steamers far out over the water. The sound comes
booming across the waves — like some giant cow mooing
most obstreperously in the distance, having lost her way.

At night the beach is strange. I have been there on
dark, cloudy evenings, such as follow the lowering days
that come late in the Fall. All of the drift-timber seems
then to entangle your feet, and you come suddenly face to
face with ghastly pieces of wreck, that mimic in their
strangeness the fantastic forms of the creatures that
inhabit the sea. What can be a greater wonder than the
phosphorescent glimmerings that bedeck the waves as
they break on the shore ? The jellyfish, that die at the
end of summer and disintegrate, make the sand luminous,
and at every step you see your glowing tracks behind ;
you make golden foot-prints in the sands, as if indeed some
superhuman being had passed that way. The glowing
embers of the fishermen's fires start and die with the

48 South Beach.

breeze, and the light-house alternately opens and shuts its
great red eye.

I have had one of the larger owls follow me at night
for half a mile along the beach, flying in circles about my
head, but keeping at a respectful distance, and retaining a
sullen silence. When I have come to the bridge I have
stolen across quietly, for the Hermit's dogs lay sleeping
close by; and then gone along the shore as near to the
waves and as far from the drift-wood as possible, as
silently, as stealthily as the owl itself.

BY THE RIPPLING SEA.

LL day I walked with the gentle murmur of the waves
fi-4 in my ears along the shore of Prince's Bay and the
•M- A- Great Kill. The morning had dawned sunny, breezy
and cool, and it was one of those August days that herald the
Fall. There is a subtilty in. the expression of such a day
that cannot be set down in words. You feel, but cannot
tell why, it is so truly Fall-like. It is near akin to yester-
day, and, again, to-morrow we may not see the face of
Autumn thus plainly. I might try to tell wherein the dif-
ference lies, but it seems to be doing Nature an injustice to
coarsely mention the soft brooding haze, or the suspicion
of coolness that lingers about even the noon-tide hours ot
such a day.

The golden asters, in their silky coats, were along the
wood-paths to the beach, and a number of widely branch-
ing yellow gerardias had taken possession of a little open-
ing in the trees. Nature loves purple and gold, and with the
exception of white and the omnipresent green of Summer,
they are her favorite colors.

On the shore I plodded along, now in the sand and
anon among the low shrubbery on the up-beach. The

50 By the Rippling Sea.

wild plums were in all shades of purple, some of them dark
in color, with a bloom on their surface ; and these I ate.
It is a pleasing reality to see the plum stretch forth its
branches, laden with fruit, that are advertised by their color,
and say, as it were, " Eat some, please, and throw away
the pits. I grew them for you." But that is what the
plum does, and so I gathered the lowest fruit, those that
grew nearest the sand, and were, therefore, ripest, and dis-
tributed the pits along the shore, as the plum had bid me
do.

All day long the crickets sang in the fields or ran from
under the planks that I overturned on the up-beach, and
now and then a Monarch butterfly or a hawk came sailing
along the shore. Several green herons flew from the rushes
and then dropped, as it were, suddenly into them again
without uttering a sound.

Where the bay-berry bushes abounded, on a stretch of
sand, there were countless numbers of white-breasted swal-
lows, and between two posts of a fence, on the topmost wire,
I counted thirty birds, and the second and third wires were
equally laden. The ground beneath the wires, and on
the tops of the fence posts, were bestrewn with the half-
digested bay berries.

The sandpipers, running along by the incoming waves,
had more confidence in me than I thought was right. I
felt as if they ought to be shoon away, lest by my harm-
lessness I might lead them to suppose that all men would
be kind to them. They are so intent upon hunting sand-
fleas that they are easily hunted themselves, and the sand-
fleas have cause to rejoice at the banging of the guns.

By the Rippling Sea. 51

On a stretch of the beach two sandpipers kept each
other company. One of them was a sprightly, industrious
individual, that engaged himself in hunting operations, and
the other, a broken-legged bird, with the injured member
painfully discommoding every motion. Often it caught in
the cast-up sea-weed and caused him to stumble. Never-
theless he caught a few fleas, but was forced now and then
to rest, and would stand motionless for a time, while his
companion waged war on the sand-hoppers.

A few small brooks came down to the beach, some oi
them losing their substance before they got across the
sand ; and in one place a rather languid spring issued from
the base of the cliff. A tin can, perched on the top of a
stake nearby, served as a means of introduction between
us.

The red cliffs of drift material were particularly red after
the soaking rain, and additional trees had recently fallen
to the shore. I recognized a post-oak, under which I had
sat some years back, now dead at the foot of the cliff.
Every now and then the earth falls from the trees growing
along the bank, and occasionally one of them rolls to the
sand below. It produces a feeling of sadness to see the
bluff falling away and the waves ever eating into the up-
land. It seems as if the ocean was taking what it did
not own, that some injustice was being perpetrated, and
that the cedars, oaks and other trees that come tumbling
to the shore, owe their death to some powerful enemy, that
works most stealthily even in the quiet days of Summer
sunshine.

The cliffs extend along the shore for several miles,

52 By the Rippling Sea.

though they are only high and perpendicular for a short
distance, and, indeed, the low ones, that are not so steep,
and are clothed with golden-rods, bay-berry bushes and
asters, are much more companionable. There was a small
cleft, or bight, in the cliff that opened to the southwest
and met at right angles to the shore. It was so narrow
that someone had laid a short beam from side to side and
used it as a seat, from whence they might look along the
shore and the sea. The view was bounded by a projecting
cliff in the distance, where leaned some tottering trees.
The white-breasted swallows skimmed the surface of the
bay, now and then dipping as they flew, and a kingfisher
sounded his rattle. The beach was covered with innumer-
able little stones, and the inrush and outgo of the waves
caused them to roll, and the sound of their striking against
one another was added to that produced by the sea itself.
There was not a sign of a human habitation from the
bight, or anything to remind me that mine were not the
only footprints ever made in the sand. The world of men
seemed far away, and the hours were as peaceful as if I
had found one of the by-paths leading to the Garden of
Eden.

A pear-tree leaned over the bank by the shore and
cast its fruit down the slope to the sand, and there were
also seedling apple-trees that gave me and the crickets of
their abundance. At one place a small rat scampered
away, and anon I passed by a sleeping dog on the sand,
so silently that he he did not know that any one was
near.

As I approached a small house by the shore, a frisky,

By the Rippling Sea. 53

long-haired dog came bounding across the beach, and after
the preliminaries indispensable to a proper acquaintance
were gone through with, he commenced to bark and jump
about in a most excited way. 1 was at a loss to know
what ailed him and bid him be still, but could only enforce
a momentary quiet, and directly he was barking as before.
Soon he seized my stick in his teeth and I realized what
he wanted, and securing a barrel hoop flung it down the
beach many times, for he merely wished to play.

Two small pigs looked knowingly from their pen placed
on the sand at the foot of the bank, and I made them put
their light brown eyes close to one of the cracks between the
boards, that I might look them fairly in the face. I ob-
served where they had previously made their escape by
burrowing in the soft sand, and several boards and stakes
had been used to make their prison more secure.

Two ponds stretched back from the shore, one ot them
profaned by a hotel on its border, but the other remaining in
all the glory of weedy margins and tree-covered banks.
Near this pond I tarried awhile, for a wild honeysuckle had
burst forth again in its June-time array of flowers, and a
Carolina wren was chattering in the trees. Hibiscus
flowers were along the pond-border, and also a tall, wav-
ing grass, that in ripening had turned to a beautiful purple-
green.

At the upper end of the pond, hidden in the trees, was
an old homestead, with its roof fallen in, a ruined chimney,
and a few of those hardy flowers and shrubs growing
round about, without which no old house seems complete.
For years only one or two rooms appeared to be occupied

54 By the Rippling Sea.

in this forlorn old mansion — only one or two of its win-
dows let in the sun. The crane hung in the chimney,
that was built with the most ancient part of the dwelling,
and everything about the house seemed to look to the
past — like an old man who sits by the fire and broods on
the memory of bygone days.

The most joyous thing I ever saw near the old house
were the daffodils in Spring, and the most industrious was
a colony of wasps in the old cherry tree.

Perhaps the man who lived in this ancient dwelling
was as proud as the turkey-gobbler that strutted about
among the box bushes. It certainly was a fine bird, and
perhaps he was an equally fine man, but Nature had not
decked him out as gaily as she had the gobbler. Great
folds of skin, of red, blue, and pink, blended together in a
marvelous way, and with the flashing dark eyes. The
pendant from the bill, reaching the breast, was equally
gorgeous, and the feathers, black and glossy. Indeed, the
turkey is a fashionable bird in feathers as well as without,
and would do to walk the avenues, arrayed in his splendid
attire, with those who parade for show.

But now the dwelling was deserted, and the barn door
hung wide on its hinges. The turkeys were gone; and the
open windows let in the rain. The roof of the older
portion of the house had fallen further away from the more
recent addition, though it still clung to the chimney where
once hung the crane. A tree-toad pressed close to a
mossy shingle, and was bathed in the afternoon sun, and
beneath the tottering roof the spotted wasps had built one
of their jug-like nests. The long branches of the matri-

By the Rippling Sea. 55

mony bush, hidden for a time from the light, finally sought
it again, and pierced the boards near the eaves ; and the
catnip growing at the chimney's base shed a pleasant odor
about the crumbling pile.

Within was an old sofa, a rush-bottomed chair tied
together with a rope, and over the floor a multitude of
papers and a number of religious books and pamphlets.
One of these was on the proper mode of spending the
Sabbath, but I could find nothing therein about wandering
afield alone. That was not the religious way, though it is
eminently a religious way of spending the Sabbath. It
contained a number of anecdotes concerning barns struck
by lightning because they sheltered hay gathered on
Sunday, but I saw no mention of the church near my
home that has been twice thus visited, though its bell has
tolled regularly every Sabbath day.

The attic contained several articles left there by a still
older tenant — a pair of hatchels for separating the fibrous
parts of hemp or flax, and the account-books of James La-
Forge, who carried on the business of a smith in the first years
of the century. A careful inspection of his books, covering
a space of ten years, revealed that he had served in his
trade one hundred and nineteen different persons, thirty-
eight of them, likehimself, bearing a name of Huguenot
origin. It was interesting to read a page of the domestic
affairs of many of these worthies who figure in the records
of the county ; to see how many horses they had shod in
a year, and the bolts, and bars, and chains, that were
made or mended for them. Placed between the leaves
of one of these old volumes was an interesting bill of items

56 By the Rippling Sea.

purchased at the country store, and also one for twenty-six
shad at nine cents each.

Nature looked joyous outside through the open win-
dow, and the ruddy-cheeked apples glowed on the tree,
but within was a spirit of sadness that brooded over all
like a heavy vapor. If you moved a door its creaking
sounded past, as if it had wearied with the years, and I
know not what charm it would have taken to have made
the rooms seem glad again, unless it might have been the
laugh of a little child or the gambols of a kitten.

THE OLD STONE HOUSE.

|Y friend and I walked along the lane. It had
been used for more than a hundred years, and
the constant wear of the wheels, and the ever
washing of the rain, had made it a wide rut, the width of a
wagon. Little streams of water trickled in the soft earth
where the wheels had made their last impressions; the
woods skirted one side, and a straggling hedge, with some
large trees, and the broad open fields the other. The mes-
sages, the letters and the news, the tidings of war and of
peace that have been borne along the lane ! The limbs
of the trees overshadow it, the alder catkins dangle by its
side, and in Spring, the first little blue butterflies— those
blossoms with wings — flutter along it, as if they too were
touched by the dreams that hover with them in the lane.

As we walked silently on, we stepped backward in
time, we heard the foxes barking, and the sound of the first
tree falling. We saw Daniel Lake hurrying to his home
with his deed patent of the untilled land. We saw his
little children, beheld them playing in the lane, and we
followed old Daniel to his grave, and stood mourners with
the family there. Just as you turn the leaves of a book

58 The Old Stone House.

and the scenes of life and of death that are written there
are pictured to you, so the old lane and the fields brought
a thousand impressions that made us laugh and weep in
turn. The songs of Summer, the wind rustling in the trees,
the wind again in Winter, and all the fields white with
snow, and that ever dawning and setting of the sun.

All of this came to us, and we trembled as we entered
the old gate between the giant poplars at the end of the
lane, and stood by the thick stone walls of the house. It
was deserted now ; no face watched at the window, only
our own reflections peered back upon us like a visual echo,
as we looked on the little square panes.

We knocked at the door; perhaps the shade of Mr.
Moorewood, the last occupant, might be lingering there,
engaged in reverie, so we knocked hard on the door with
the knocker. A sound gently prepares you for a presence,
and we hoped not to intrude too abruptly upon his
Sabbath meditations.

There is a sadness in beholding the rooms once thought
so homelike given over to solitude and dampness. How
seldom we picture .our own home as deserted forever, and
the fire gone out, for the pent-up fire has a warm, bright
soul of its own. The sun shining in at the window, and
even the singing of the birds without, seem strange in the
deserted room. A man's garments found in a field cause
you to start. So any artificial thing without its counter-
part is a surprise ; a road without vehicles and a house
without tenants alike impress us with the sense of incom-
pletenesss.

No wonder, then, that we stood before the hearth

The Old Stone House. 59

without speaking ; no wonder that we opened the cup-
board doors gently, lest their creaking in some way might
be a rude interruption. Empty bottles stood on the
shelves, a straw hat lay there also, and over all had settled
a fine dust that had been brought by the vagrant wind.

We got down on our knees and measured the broad
boards of the floor with a rule, inspected the front door,
remarkable for its massive solidity, and made in two parts,
as is now again the fashion. Thus we wandered from
room to room, and learned the plan of the structure, that
must have been so deeply imprinted in the minds of its
many former occupants, now in their graves in the field.
Indeed, it is a curious knowledge we have of our homes ;
like the rabbit's information of the clover in the field,
there are many things that can be known only to us.

So the house was strange, and the tones of our voices
were new to its walls. The sigh of the wind was the same
as we had heard elsewhere, and even the outlooks reminded
us of similar scenes miles away. But we lingered at the
little window that looked between the poplars, down the
lane. It was one of those garden views wherein the
blending of nature with the artificial has made a pleasing
result. Perhaps it was strengthened by the knowledge of
antiquity, by the old fence, the poplars falling to decay,
and by the rank, tall weeds along the hedge, that seemed
to bespeak a strong vitality still, though their stems were
dead from the cold.

Is it any wonder that we searched the garret well ? for
the greatest treasures of an old house are most often there.
The bottles and straw hats may be kept in the cupboard

60 The Old Stone House.

down stairs, but the general litter of the garret tells more
of the family history than all the other rooms combined.
The garret is the private museum of the homestead, and if
you can see it in all its completeness you will know how
long the family have dwelt in the mansion. The parlor
makes its contributions from time to time, and so keeps
fresh and new ; the kitchen sends its old pots and pans,
and many papers are piled there that are thought too
interesting to be thrown away, but which lie unread and
forgotten.

So we searched diligently in the litter ; the floor was
strewn with scores of copies of The Albion, many of them
stained with yellow lines by the rain that had beaten in
through the roof, and all of them imbrowned by time. We
tuined their pages — read of the cholera in England and
Scotland, of the last illness of Goethe, and perused the
reviews of the latest novels. There is nothing that loses so
much of its pith with the years as political discussions and
events. We cannot feel all the glow of the times. We
reverence the story-teller, for it is the clothing in words
that so often makes one fact, or the life of one man, stand
out more noticeably in the past than another. The old
news in the Albion is read in a different sense from that
which was first intended ; we view it now as we would the
account of the war of Jnisthona. The " total overthrow
and utter prostration of the revolutionists " has often been
told, and that Sheriff Dugan restored order after Mr.
McKenzie and Mr. Shannon were pelted with eggs is not
new to history.

Turning the pages, we came to a piece of purple silk

The Old Stone House. 61

laid between the leaves, that had probably formed a part
of Miss Moorewood's dress, and copy-books on the floor
showed samples of her writing. Family letters lay in this
old pile, accompanied by used checks returned by the
bank. These letters remind you in tone of those written
yesterday, of those written to you by your friend. Their
messages are the same. It needs but the change of signa-
tures, with the change of years, for the general truths are
there. They show the ironbound fate that must ever hold
us. It was these documents, now so brown and stained
by the weather, that they read with eager eyes walking in
the lane. They gathered by the hearth or in the hall, and
the letter was read aloud ; it was treasured, stored in the
attic, and now is pulled from its hiding.

We find a receipt, dated July, 1836, for one hundred
and seventeen dollars, for rent, perhaps for this same old
house ; and also a detailed account of the letters sent by
Mr. Moorewood in 1827. The diligent correspondent
spent as much for postage and wax and paper in those
days as he did for the taxes or rent of his broad acres.

While I turned the pile my friend climbed through the
skylight and sat in the sun, ever and anon calling to me
how beautiful the meadows looked on this bright day. " I
can hear you scratching, scratching down there, like a
mouse in the wall," he shouted, and, poking his head into
the garret, inspected my progress, and then turned away
to his vision of fair meadows again.

Still I burrowed on, now upturning a certificate stating
that Mr. Moorewood had learned surveying in Halifax,
and now a number of Eugene Sue's novel, " The Wander-

62 The Old Stone House.

ing Jew." A mutilated copy of " Lalla Rookh," and the
" Memoirs of My Youth," that book of sweet confidence,
by Lamartine. As I turn the pages, I find that the pas-
sages here and there have been marked — marked by some
one living in this old house — and when Lamartine describes
so beautifully his father reading Tasso aloud by the fire,
when the doors of the little house of Milly were closed and
the dog barked in the courtyard, then this admiring hand
writes on the margin, " What can surpass domestic joys ? "

Yes, yes, kind annotator, but do not think me un-
friendly for speaking out your secret mind, for it is your
own house of Milly, with its fireplace, its thick beams
blackened by the smoke, and its domestic joys, of which
we fain would speak, though so much now is left to fancy
alone.

My friend still sat upon the roof, and, climbing by his
side, we looked across the bright meadows out to the sea.
The seashore formed a glistening line, and the ships crept
along so slowly in the distance that they seemed to be
fixtures there, like some great sea creatures that were
content to idly sun themselves. So we sat together and
talked, and Nature seemed very kind to us. What can be
more pleasing than the full confidence in the sincerity
of your friend ? A man's best nature, as well as his worst,
is the development of mutual intercourse.

We climbed again through the skylight, to the old
trunk, and so to the floor, and once more explored the
rooms. When we got outside we viewed the house from
different points, for each aspect gave a slightly different
impression. Houses, like individuals, seem to be stem or

The Old Stone House. 63

mild, seem to be happy or sorrowful, and no doubt they
affect the character of those who live within their walls.

As we walked away across the fields we lingered, and
now and then cast our looks behind. There was the long,
low house, with the broad salt meadows coming close to
its walls. Its trees, its barn, and the family grave-yard,
seemed all in keeping, as if Nature herself had said, "If
man must live here, build the house this way," and they
had followed her plan. She is most kind to these low,
rambling, rural houses, and sheds about them a homelike
aspect. Indeed, it is very hard to build a large, preten-
tious mansion that will be thoroughly in accord with the
scene. Nature appears overtaxed with it, and the windows
do not peep out the same homelike rays. The green
spreading lawns, with their display of flowers in mathe-
matically exact beds, all representing a great expenditure,
do not produce a more pleasing impression than the little
gardens with their hardy flowers and vegetables side by
side, and maybe the red apples, in Autumn, lying promis-
cuously over the ground.

TENANTS.

a LARGE dwelling stood empty in the Clove valley
for many years, save for the natural tenantry that
every old house and barn is bound to receive.
Wasps, bats, owls and their kindred only respect the rights
ofpreoccupancy, and any vacant pla.ce is theirs if they wi?h
it and are strong enough to retain their particular nooks and
crannies. Thus this old house and neighboring out-build-
ings were fully occupied. Woodpeckers had bored holes
into the piazza, posts and house-side, a swarm of honey
bees lived in the chimney, a colony of Carolina bats in
the barn, and in Spring a phoebe bird built her nest under
its eaves.

An old German and his wife occupied the gate-house,
and their cows cropped the grass on the hill-side or stood
in their stalls in the barn. Horses were taken to board in
Summer, and the old man spent his days looking after
them and the cows, repairing the fence to keep them in, or
in sallying forth on an anxious journey in quest of some
restless Bucephalus who, breaking the fence, had cantered
away.

In rambling about the premises, I often met the old

Tenants. 65

man, who had all the garrulity of age, and would talk to
me by the hour of the beasts that tenanted the mansion
and of that parade of interesting items that nature, like a
well-conducted newspaper, spreads before us day by day.
Then, again, he would tell of his misfortunes, how he had
been running up and down the roads, this way and that,
searching for an escaped horse, and, finally growing tired,
he had to be brought home in a wagon, for he was an old
man now.

Often I stood at a distance and watched him chop
wood under the shed near his dwelling, or follow, with
bowed head, the narrow path that led from his door to the
barn. The path wound up the hill under the trees and
back of the mansion, and nearby a dog was chained to
his house, and would gyrate and yelp most piteously when
he saw the old man passing by.

One Summer two calves were confined for a time in
the corner of the orchard fence, near the path, and their
little anxious heads were thrust through the paling at
whomsoever passed that way. The old man said " they
would be three days old to-morrow," so anxious was he to
have them grow as fast as possible, to have a few more
hairs on their diminutive bodies. One of them endeavored
to swallow my hand in my efforts to discover the condi-
tion of its teeth, but that member, much to the disappoint-
ment of the calf, came away with me.

Near the path stood a broad-spreading hemlock, also
several maples and some other trees, and beneath their
shade several seats had been constructed. It was here
that the old man most often sat and talked, and on Summer

66 Tenants.

days watched the bees fly from the chimney. He had
placed a flagstone over the flue which they occupied, and
never disturbed them, for his father had kept bees in Ger-
many, and these flying from the chimney brought to his
mind the scenes of his boyhood. He delighted to tell me
how his father managed his straw hives, and how many
he had, and then, mayhap, we would inspect the large
paper nests that the spotted wasps were ever building some-
where about the deserted mansion.

One year one of these structures was fastened to the
grape arbor by the house-side, and was protected by its
eaves. The entrance to the nest was about two inches
from the bottom, and the old man wished me to take it,
stop up the hole at night, when the wasps were in, and
take it away if I desired. Then he fell to telling me how
kind the wasps were, how they minded their own business,
and if people would only let them alone they would never
be stung. We drew close to the nest and watched the
workers busily engaged on its top in making it larger, for
they work most industriously as long as the warm weather
lasts, never dreaming, apparently, that Summer will not be
always, but die finally of the cold, leaving young in various
stages of growth in the cells within.

The old man was particularly loquacious on the subject
of speculators; he who lived so quietly wished to hear the
clangings of the outer world, but he was mistrustful, for,
like St. Pierre, he considered himself taught by calamity.
"Ah!" he would say, " wasn't I hit on the head by a fel-
low at Four Corners, and what a lot of trouble I had over
it. I went to the justice's twice and then to Richmond,

Tenants. 67

and finally the man was acquitted, though indicted by the
grand jury for assault with intent to kill."

Thus would we sit under the trees and discourse on
the law, the speculators, the railroads and the bees, and the
old man would call me his " dear friend," would take me
by the sleeve, and put his hand on my shoulder and talk
most earnestly. He would walk away as if to depart, and
then return and sit by my side again. He had not lived
in vain, for he was content to die — had a philosophical
desperation; he saw that he must surrender to circum-
stances and to what he was.

Sometimes when the rain fell we took shelter under
one of the piazzas, the roof of which was upheld by trimmed
cedars, the original supports having rotted away. There
were several poles stretched from post to post to keep the
cattle from invading the premises, and under its floor
dwelt a rabbit. Often I remained there for hours alone,
while the rain fell upon the roof, and looked out upon tbe
scene I knew in all of its moods. The cattle grazing on
the slope, the brook below in the meadow, and the hills
beyond clothed with trees. If rain were not so common
we would regard it with wonder — the blue sky of an hour
ago shedding tears.

The wall of the house was built of stones gathered from
the neighboring hills, and they might have been labeled,
if the house had had a tenant, and served as his geological
museum of the drift boulders of the vicinity. There were
two or three granites, trap, several limestones and sand-
stones, including Jersey trias. Sometimes when the rain
fell in torrents and came gushing from the spout connected

68 Tenants.

with the roof, the horses ran to the protection of the house
and, wheeling about, placed their heads in the most shel-
tered situation. There they would stand, with their heads
under the piazza roof viewing me with mild, patient eyes,
and waiting for the storm to go over.

Another shelter from the rain was the old chicken
house behind the barn, and oft have I sat in the nests on
the leaves that had blown therein from the neighboring
trees. They were the collection of years, for the nests
had been eggless for a long time, and the door gone from
its hinges. Now and then a cow came and placed her
head on the pole nailed athwart the doorway, reached her
nose as far out toward me as she could, and gave several
sniffs of surprise. I used to regard the withered leaves
affectionately, for they were the souvenirs of some past
Summer, and chance had saved them from decay. The
breeze that rustled in the neighboring green trees caused
them to gyrate about the floor, and, no doubt, many were
lost through the open door-way.

The wild mice had stored many nuts and seeds in the
convenient nooks in the roof, and the nests were well
stocked with remnants of their feasts that had dropped
from the beams above. There was a blending of Summer
and Winter in the scene that was ever interesting. I could
hear the z-ing of the harvest flies without, whose song might
be termed the essence of Summer, for no sound has more
of Summer in its tone, while within were the withered
leaves and the gnawed nuts from the mouse's Winter store.

Occasionally a gray squirrel hopped about beneath the
trees, and at evening the rabbits came from their hiding.

Tenants. 69

Once I sat on the prostrate trunk of a willow that some
storm of several summers past had blown down, watching
the bats fly from the ventilator in the roof of the barn,
when from under the building came a rabbit and shortly,
from beneath the house, another. They ran about in the
grass, twitching their noses and flapping their ears. One
sat in the path as a horse came near, and finally when it
was obliged to retreat, ran under the log on which I lay.
Afterward it sat in the grass near the doghouse, whose oc-
cupant commenced to howl, for just then the old German
came driving a cow along the path to the barn. The
rabbit remained quiet, though so plainly visible, and the
old man and the cow passed close by. Whether from
knowingness or stupidity, this habit of keeping still at the
approach of danger has saved many members of Bunny's
family from destruction.

The anxious howling of the dog was easily explained,
for his supper was given him in the barn, and when he
was untied he made a dead set for the door, and often
bunked against it. He ran as fast as he could for his sup-
per, and as he slept in the barn, this daily run was the chiet
novelty of his existence, the only change.

In June, when the young bats left their mothers and
flew about on their own account, many of them fell within
the reach of this same dog and were quickly despatched.
In the morning their dead bodies were thrown out of the
window by the old man, who complained of their foolish-
ness. These little bats would also hang up anywhere
about the barn, for, perhaps, they were unable to find the
way to the general assemblies of their kind. All day sev-

70 Tenants.

eral large clusters of the bats hung from the rafters of the
roof, and when the sun was setting they commenced to
click incessantly, and at dusk flew singly and by twos and
threes from the slatted windows.

The English sparrows used to go in and out of the stall
windows, which were without glass, but a scarlet tanager
coming in that way became confused and flew against the
glazed window on the opposite side, beneath which I found
its dead body.

The old man rarely found fault with the creatures that
lived about the place, and helped them all he could in
their struggle for existence. He once complained that the
crows pulled his pears for him — pulled them all off and
dropped them on the ground; but he was friendly to the
rabbits, and felt much grieved one day when a nest of
theirs had been destroyed. " Monday I made hay," said
he, " Tuesday I made hay again, and I had two fellows
to help me. Up in the orchard they found a rabbit's nest
with seven young ones, and they, fools, thought they were
rats and killed them with the forks. They might have
known by the ears. Anyhow, in the Fall they get shot,
so they only die a little sooner."

Even the woodpeckers that bored into the side of the
house, and looked out from their fastness and cackled at
us as we stood below, were not regarded as trespassers,
though the old man, one Autumn, after they had gone, did
nail some pieces of tin over the holes. Nevertheless they
came back the next year and reared their young in the side
of the house as usual. The wily high-holders knew they
had a good residence and were loath to leave, and the old

Tenants. 71

man considered them most knowing and praiseworthy
birds.

After years of unoccupancy this old mansion was at last
to find a human tenant. The bees were banished from
the chimney, the rabbit from beneath the piazza floor, and
the woodpeckers were to poke their heads no longer from
the house-side and cackle at us below, for with the natural
tenantry, the old man and I were forced to leave.

It has been said by the poetess Landon that memory
sheds no gladness o'er the past, and that it cannot make
the present more bright and cheerful; yet is a pleasant re-
collection that lingers about the old man and the creatures
that sought the protection of the silent, weather-stained
mansion and the neighboring trees.

Tercival spoke nearer the truth when he said that
many hours of the past are brightened as " time steals
away." This is especially true of the memory of hours
spent afield, for a man is rarely out of touch with nature,
however he may find fault with his human companions.
Indeed what would we do without our memories, for do
they not help us to mind the coming way ; and even in the
matter of rambling afield, the halo that hovers about our
previous journeys tinges the present hour, and causes the
surroundings to wear a special significance to each of us,
for we see through the spectacles of our experience.

NATIVE BROOKS.

£TT" BROOK that is purely natural, that shows no
ff"A trace of man's innovation throughout its course,
-1- A. is a great rarity. A bit of newspaper or an old,
rusty tin can lodged somewhere mid the tangled tree-
roots, tells the age, if not the year, and in the more utili-
tarian communities there is that process of cleaning up,
before which the trees and ferns are swept away. A
brook without ferns, without shade, with old tin cans and
bits of newspaper, is no longer under the rule of Sylvanus.
and every additional stroke of the axe is one for the stream
also, for a man cuts off his brook when he cuts down his
trees.

However, on Staten Island there are some woodland
brooks still remaining, though not purely wild ones, and
others whose banks have been partly cleared, but which still
retain many pleasing features. They are naturally divided
into those of the eastern and western portions, for the Fresh
Kill, from the Sound, reaching inward, approaches quite
close to the Great Kill, and these arms of the sea leave
only a neck of land a mile and three quarters wide. On
the eastern portion about a dozen streams have found

Native Brooks. 73

their way on the map, but a map gives a poor history, and
though it may exhibit with great exactness all the wind-
ings and fantastic curves that a little brook may take, it
cannot say whether its course is over sand or rocks, nor
anything of the trees that grow along its banks. The map
tells just as much to-day of the brook that runs down to
the shore nearly parallel to the Turnpike road, by Brook
Street, as it did a hundred years ago when it emptied as a
pure little stream near the " Watering Place," where the
ships stopped to fill their casks before going to sea. No
one will say of it now " how beautiful," nor quote a line
from Bryant's " Wind and Stream," and of all the wild
creatures that once wandered along its banks, only a few
muskrats, that occasionally appear on sidewalks and in
cellars, now remain.

It is the same with the Jersey Street brook, that once
ran to the shore by the " Still House Landing," and the
one that winds its way through Stapleton, an humble pris-
oner except in freshet time, when it occasionally assists
the Prohibition party, floating chairs and tables con-
veniently out of the saloon doors and basement windows.
Such was the effect of the storm of July 23d, 1887.

That the alders, with their dangling catkins, grew
along the banks of these little streams is a certainty, and
that some Dutch settler, with expansive pantaloons — a
" tough breeches," as Washington Irving would call him —
lived near by, is a great probability. But that definite
description of the times and of the relationship of man to
the surrounding natural features, that always lends a charm
to a locality, cannot be made in these later days.

74 Native Brooks.

The little spring in the slightly rising ground near the
swamp to the northeast of Silver Lake — or Fresh Pond, as
it used to be called — is much more interesting for bearing
the name of Logan, the Indian who is said to have lived
near it. He, no doubt, would share our sorrow in seeing
how often it is dry in recent years, and would help
if he could in clearing away the paper boxes and egg-
shells that are left by the average picnic party. Logan's
Spring brook is a rocky one for Staten Island. In one
place it is lost to view for several yards under rocks
and tree-roots, except when it is full of water, when it also
makes use of an upper channel. There are monstrous
crayfish hidden away under the rocks, and no end of
" water-measurers " — or " water-spiders," as they are called
— that wait patiently for some luckless creature, often a
cricket, floating down the stream. In the grounds of the
Sailors' Snug Harbor it runs through a thick growth of
little trees, where the bluejays are numerous, and finally
over a steep incline of serpentine rock and under the wall.
It finds its way through many a shaded lawn in its course
to the Kill von Kull, but art rarely improves upon nature,
and a little brook cannot be made more beautiful by being
confined between two straight stone walls.

Clove Valley, formed by a fork of the otherwise nearly
straight range of serpentine hills, forcibly reminds the
rambler of more northern views — of the hills and mild
farming country along portions of the Hudson River, only
there the rock is different. So well is the valley itself walled
in, that if a dam were built at the Clove, and another where
Britton's mill once stood, a considerable lake would be

Native Brooks. 75

formed. In olden time, just after the first pond was made,
the place was particularly favorable for a naturalist ; for in
these days it is occasionally visited by the great blue
herons, many rare plants grow there, and the phaeton
butterfly flies feebly in June. Trout have been caught in
some numbers, even in recent years, and the common
sucker abounds. A night rambler, with a lantern, will
discover, in the month of May, scores of them swimming
upstream to spawn, and when a shallow place is approached
there is a scurry among the fish, accompanied by much
splashing, as they make for deeper water.

About 1796 John McVicker, who lived in the Dongan
mansion, constructed a canal through the valley from
Silver Lake to bring more water for the mill on " Mill
Creek," and it was not so long ago that the trees were
felled and turned into bungs for beer-barrels at the mill on
Clove Pond. Clove Valley Brook once flowed through a
deep ravine, and it is evident that there was less swamp
then than there is to-day, for the numerous dams made to
collect the water into ponds have also caused the muggy
meadows.

The brook system, one branch of which drains the
region about Four Corners — or Centreville, as it used to be
called — is quite extensive, and its exact watershed is hard
to define. The main stream forms for a considerable
distance the boundary -line between Castleton and North-
field, and in the days of Gov. Dongan was known as
Palmer's Run. It formerly received the entire drainage
from the Clove Valley, and its waters have at one time or
another turned the wheels of many different mills. A

76 Native Brooks.

portion of its course is still through pleasant pasture-land,
but a brook is so in sympathy with the season, that it
depends largely when you see it as to the impression it
leaves ; it seems in Winter hardly the one we knew in
Summer days. Occasionally, as late as April, the more
placid portions are frozen over, the caddis fly laivse and
water beetles may be seen on the bottom through the ice,
and it seems at such times nothing short of a miracle when
it is considered what a change a few days will bring, and
how considerable that change really is. When Spring is
fairly started it comes very fast indeed, and one may almost
give the day of the month by the unfolding of the benzoin
flowers — they keep so truly the schedule time of the
season.

On the banks of the branch of Palmer's Run, that
crosses the Turnpike to the north-west of Four Corners,
there stands a large white oak, with wide spreading
branches, and the fern Polypodium finds a home there,
growing on the top of a large boulder. This is a rare plant
on the Island, though so common northward and on higher
ground. An old Indian wanders often about the woods,
and occasionally along this stream, carrying a book of
songs under his arm, and when he gets tired of walking he
sits down and sings. He says he can sing better than he
can do anything else. One day he had a bundle of cat-
nip, which he had gathered for a cat belonging to a family
of his acquaintance in the city, and as he walked along he
gave an account of his people : "Among Indians, no edu-
cation. Father take child to another tribe — he learn to
speak language. Go by horse, across great prairie — only

Native Brooks. 77

see grass and little bushes — great blue sky — nice." The
idea of sky was expressed by throwing his arm over his
head, and looking upward, and the little bushes were
compared to one near by.

Willow brook is one of the best known streams on the
Island, and also one of the longest ; rising near the highest
point, it empties into that arm of Fresh Kill, known as
" Main Branch," having in all a course of about four miles.
At various times its water has been used by mills and small
factories, the best known of these being the gun factory
near the Willow Brook road, and the Crocheron mill, near
the Bull's Head, or Phcenixville. This mill was standing
in 1884, though much decayed, and the Italians employed
on the proposed cross island railroad, made the building
their home. It is now fallen down, most of the timbers
removed, the wild flowers growing over the remaining ones,
and through the shaft -hole in the mill stone. By the pond,
that once served as a head of water for this mill, there
stands three trees of the river birch, which is not a com-
mon kind on the Island, though so plentiful along some of
the New Jersey rivers. Since these trees were discovered,
some others have been found, and along the Annadale
road, by a brook side, there are quite a number. They
always seem dissatisfied, as it were, with their bark, ap-
parently wishing to get rid of a portion of it, for it hangs in
loose pieces that flap in the wind. Perhaps this bark is
useful in retaining the rain that falls on it, as the tree is
a particularly moisture -loving species.

A shag-bark hickory grows near by, and the nuts are re-
markable for their thin shells and large size. The wild mice

78 Native Brooks.

have also found this out, and congregate at the foot of the
tree in a little pile of stones. They are not in favor of per-
petuating this particular variety, and know nothing of selec-
tion for the good of their kind, and so nibble two small holes
in every nut. There is also a peperidge, or sour gum tree,
near the brook, which is next in size to the large one on
New Dorp lane. It has long served as a corner of a fence,
and perhaps is the mark of an old boundary line. The
fence rails enter its hollow trunk at right angles, and are
fastened to an old post propped up "inside the cavity.
A gray squirrel retreated to the tree, and wasps flew in
circles about their home in its broken top, one September
day, when the leaves were just commencing to turn to
that beautiful crimson, so characteristic of the peperidge
tree. Not even the red maple, with its red flowers in
spring, its branch tips red, and its vivid red leaves in
autumn, ever attains such a deep blood color as the
peperidge tree.

Brooks are not only in sympathy with the seasons, but
they are glad or sad at we take them, and the Moravian
brook, as it winds its way mid the white and gray tomb-
stones in the cemetery, seems to be in accord with the
scene. It is not the glad little brook that starts from the
Woolsey pond on the Todt Hill road, nor does it seem the
same that flows through the low-lying meadows to New
Creek by the shore. Out on these meadows it is joined
by the stream from Garretson's, one branch of which rises
in Mersereau's valley, where the hermit had his cabin by
the spring in the days of the Revolution, and where was
enacted that tragedy that makes the place so interesting.

Native Brooks. 79

An old deserted farm-house, with hand-made lath and
beams, and filled in with mud, stands on the hill facing
this deep ravine, and the outlook, extending to the ocean
beyond, is one of the most pleasing on the island. Some
of the orchard trees are very large and have many tenants
among the birds, and cardinal grossbeaks live Winter and
Summer mid the catbrier on the hill-side. The other
branch of this brook rises in the swamp, where the Reeds,
father and son, raised willows for basket-making. The
trees still remain, and " forget-me-nots " grow along the
brook bank, but the house is gone.

To the northwest of Richmond village there is a wild
piece of country, and two little brooks join in the woods
and flow into that arm of the Kill that reaches so far into
the island. As late as 1884, the night herons made their
home near its banks, and the deserted nests in young
swamp oaks, often several in a tree, and an occasional one
in a white birch or cedar, may still be seen. The people
in the neighborhood gathered the eggs and, beating them
together, fed them to the cows, and the Italians also ate
many. They are as large as the eggs laid by many breeds
of hens, so a very few would make a meal. These birds
utter a dismal " qua" and always seem sad, sitting motion-
less on the trees through the day until evening, when they
go fishing in the Kills.

There is a dark, gloomy old house in the woods near
this brook, where some of the Italians lived when employed
on the railroad. It is now given over to chimney swal-
lows and wasps, and the carpenter bees have made their
tunnels in the boards for many years. One of these boards

80 Native Brooks.

has been tunneled sixty-five times, the work of many pleas-
ant Summer days.

Woodland brooks and springs are not only beautiful and
interesting, but they play no unimportant part in the house-
hold economy, and their sanitary condition is of great
moment. Dairies are named after them, and citizens can
choose their water supply with great accuracy. Many a
cow has done the trustful purchaser of her lacteal pro-
duct a great injustice, by standing with her feet in the
water of some pond or little purling stream. The dairy-
man will tell you that it is done to keep the flies off, but
" Bos," " Cush," and " Speckled Jenny," only smile with
a sort of increased-dividend expression, when slyly in-
terrogated on this point.

In April the blood-root blossoms, and its single leat
often closely clasps the flower stem, forming a sort of green
collar. It is a dainty flower but none too choice to deck
the steep hill sides of the crooked and shaded ravine
where it grows in greatest profusion. This is Blood-root
Valley and Blood-root Valley brook, along the course of
which, it is said, a British messenger, in Revolutionary
days, travelled on his way from camp to camp. This
stream, which is often dry in summer, also rises near the
highest point, and goes to form the Richmond brook.
The drainage of the district was formerly collected in a
pond, used by a saw-mill, of which there is now only a few
beams left, and the dam is broken. About 1870, the boys
bathed in this pond, and a little lame boy with crutches
and a board for support, used to enjoy himself as much
as his companions.

Native Brooks. 81

A number of skirmishes occurred along Richmond or
Stony brook, in the years of the Revolution, particularly
on the day of the fight at St. Andrew's Church. But it is
more pleasing to think of it in the times of peace, to see the
water snakes glide in so smoothly, the turtles scuttle with
much haste and the wayward frogs jump recklessly off the
bank frightening the black-nosed dace below. When these
little fish are disturbed, they will scatter in all directions,
coming together shortly, if they imagine the danger is
past. At other times they will sink to the deepest places
in the stream, and remain on the sand or pebbles, not
moving a fin, and as their backs are sand colored, they are
not easily seen from above. Occasionally when there is
nothing to fear, one will be seen lying motionless for a long
time between two pebbles, and thus can they rest and
sleep when they desire.

There are numbers of plane-wood trees on the banks of
this stream, and a profusion of wild flowers and a patch ol
periwinkle on the steep hill-side to the west. A wooded
slope, with a brook nearby, always proves attractive to the
birds, and this one is a great favorite with them. Cat-
birds congregate about the smilax patches and sing their
varied songs, which are always worth listening to, but it is
in May, just before nest building commences, when the
males talk to their drab-colored mates in coaxing, faint
undertones, that they are most interesting, and those who
have not listened to this bright-eyed bird at such a time,
only know a small portion of his vocabulary.

There has been much discussion of late as to the real
source of the Mississippi, and it would turn an explorer's

82 Native Brooks.

hair gray to discover just where Old Place brook rises, to
decide to the world's satisfaction from under which par-
ticular skunk cabbage leaf courses the first little rill. The
marsh -marigolds, that grow so plentifully nearby, do not
know where it rises, and the snails that float on their
backs, each with its broad fleshy foot turned up to the sun,
do not care. They start from some water-parsnips stem
or dead twig, on their journey, but all trials to place them
gently in the water with the hand, and have them float
away, result in failures, for they also can appreciate the
appearance of danger.

To the east of the Bohman mansion, near Bohman's
Point, there is a little brook, that flows through a sandy
semi pasture and woodland region. It is bordered
in part by willows and old orchard trees, and the land has
that unmistakable air of an ancient farming spot. On the
high sand dune, nearby, about which this brook bends in
bow fashion, the Indians lived in old time, and their
implements and little heaps of flint chips, where the arrows
were made, may still be discovered. The spring, where
they got water, is on the hill-side, though now filled up
with sand and grass grown, but the stones that formed its
sides mark the site, and a tiny rill issues from among them
in very wet weather.

They had an eye for beauty, as evinced by the patterns
on the broken pieces of pottery lying about, and no doubt
they thought the warblers very gay, that congregate in
spring-time about a moist place near the brook. The
warblers come every year, just the same, but the Indians
are gone, and probably in the large factory across the Kill

Native Brooks. 83

with its thousands of employes, only one or two would
recognize their implements scattered among the other
stones on the sand.

There are many brooks on the eastern portion of the
Island, too small to be recorded on any map and known
to but few, but it is with brooks as when viewing a great
estate, just as often the little gate house, as the mansion on
the hill, that leaves the most pleasing impression. Many
a man remembers with affection the rill that turned his
first water wheel, or maybe where the brook-mint grew,
and though enlarged experience may show that it was a
poor little stream indeed, yet it is the one that brings the
tears to his eyes.

THE POND-MEADOW.

IT is dark, the snow lies on the ground, and I sit silently
in the house and think of the warmer days when I
rambled at eventide, when the sun did not set so early
and there was a greater margin to the afternoons. It was
pleasant then, when the hurry and disquiet of town employ-
ment were at an end, to steal away to some retired nook,
where only the louder and more piercing cries uttered in the
warfare of commerce, could intrude upon the ear. It was
easy to find such surroundings, and they seemed to bespeak
unbroken solitude, where perchance the foot of man had
not been for many weeks. But soon there broke upon the
ear a multitude of artificial sounds that had found their
way thither through the leafy trees, and which proclaimed
the still existing uproar of the outer world. We cannot
escape these clangings, if we live within the reach of baker's
bread, and our ears have become so accustomed to them,
to the blowing of whistles, the firing of guns and the rum-
bling of trains, that we often fail to give them heed. There
is also a certain companionship that is not objectionable
in the far away sounds that are due to human agency —
mankind is reachable they seem to say, and awaits you in
the distance. This is especially true of the whistling, rum-

The Pond-Meadow. 85

bling train across the meadows, that does not break but
rather, as a reminder of the outer world, deepens the sense
of retirement.

Such a place of rural scenes, where nevertheless the
sounds of commerce are ever audible, are the acres of wood-
land and uncultivated sandy fields on the north shore of
the Island, between Old Place creek and the settlement
along the kill. For many years prior to the railroad, though
in sight of the cities across the Sound, and not far from
New York itself, this corner escaped the enterprise of trade;
utility went round and left these acres to the grasshoppers,
to the bitterns, and to me.

With the railroad came changes, but not immediately,
and for the first years of its occupancy, save for the width
of the track, the land was undisturbed. Much of it indeed,
still remains unoccupied, but commerce having looked that
way, already covets the water fronts, and the speculator
has raised his signs of " Lots for Sale." By-and-by will be
the factories, the rows of squalid houses, the goats and the
tin cans.

The land is low and swampy in places, where the trees
grow large, and anon there are sandy tracts which support
only a few blackberry bushes and sumachs. Along the
salt meadows, to the west, are several irregular dunes, and
cutting deep into the woods through a narrow neck, is a
bay -like salt meadow with a straggling creek in its midst.

In these barren worn out fields, in the woods on the
edge of the salt meadow, and particularly of the bay or
pond shaped meadow, which is now crossed by the railroad
trestle, I have spent many hours, often staying into the

86 The Pond-Meadow.

night to hear the bitterns and the whippoorwills. I built
perches or roosts in the trees, from whence I might see
across the pond-meadow, or climbing upon the trestle,
watched the life that abounded in the creek and the grass
below.

When seated mid the large beams that composed the
trestle that stretched far in the distance, I used to feel very
small indeed, and I was often reminded as I sunned myself
there, of the traveller's story of the Egyptian in the ear of
the Sphinx. I quickly found that I was placed in an
unusual position, and might watch the many creatures
below me unobserved by them, and thus to good advantage
to myseli.

The muskrats are numerous in the creek, and in the
ditches, dug on either side of the trestle, probably for the
dual purpose of drainage and protection from meadow
fires. In making these trenches the earth was thrown up
in piles, and these, when suitable, are taken possession of
by the muskrats, who tunneling them find dry retreats
above the highest tides. Occasionally at twilight, the parent
muskrats bring their half grown young out to swim, and
the family go paddling up and down the ditch. One of
the musquashes will sometimes call continuously, in a low
somewhat musical strain to his mate, and whenever they
come near each other, they will touch noses, which no
doubt in muskrat etiquette signifies great affection, as it
does in some African tribes. The muskrat's pappoose is a
very independent individual, and his wilful ways, when he
has reached a certain size, cause his mother much anxiety.
She swims after him, and rat minor goes where he lists.

The Pond-Meadow. 87

When swimming they ripple their tails, and perhaps this
aids them in their progress. They make considerable way
against even the strongest tides, and leave well denned V-
shaped wakes.

The high-tide bushes grow by the creek banks, and also
along the ditches on either side of the trestle, making two
dark green parallel lines in the lighter colored and shorter
meadow grass. These bushes are the home of the common
long-billed marsh-wrens, who weave their domed nests in
the branches, and whose bubbling, gushing songs, often
continue late into the night. I have heard them in June,
as late as 8.20 p. M., and they also sing until the middle of
September. Often they throw themselves into the air, and
fly slowly with a hovering, dangling flight, while they utter
their impetuous song, falling again into the meadow as
suddenly as they arose. It is pleasing to watch them go
up and down a vertical stem, their tails most pertly turned
over their backs in the opposite direction from that more
fashionable adjustment of the same appendage in other
birds. They often linger about the lower beams of the
trestle, especially where some of them have been laid over
a reedy ditch, and on a neighboring plank-walk ; I remem-
ber one day, that my approaching foot-steps disturbed one
of these sprightly little birds, and instead of jumping off
its side, as a sparrow would have done, it simply slipped
between two of the boards and disappeared into the
meadow below. The sea-side finches are neighbors of the
marsh-wrens and at evening a number of them sing along
the creek, their quaint song being among the most enter-
taining to be heard from the trestle. It starts pleasantly

88 The Pond-Meadow \

but ends rather oddly, as if indeed something had happened
the songster in the midst of his melody and caused him to
suddenly modify his tune. It may be roughly rendered in
treele-ahn, the ahn being much drawn out. Occasionally
one will hover in the air over the high-tide bushes and
sing a slightly more extended song, which, however, ends
in the same way as the shorter one. At times they also
sing a short treele-he. The birds appear about the
first of May with the marsh-wrens, long before the high-
tide bushes are in leaf, and I have heard them singing
in September. I have seen two small finches in the
spring, one on either side of the creek, and each singing
most continuously, while a female spent her time in flying
from one to the other of her rival suitors, staying but a
short time with each. She had evidently not made up her
mind — was greatly perplexed as to which she ought to
choose.

Often along the creek, the snipe call to their fellows
flying high above, and the alternate call and reply, is one
of the most pleasing bird notes to be heard from the trestle.
One could not address his friend in more kindly tones.

The little green herons often perch on the beams above
the creek, and if it chances to be on the topmost one that
offers an unobstructed run-way, they trot along for a con-
siderable distance, if not approached too rapidly. Indeed
the trestle is a favorite perching place for many birds,
where they may look out over the wide expanse of meadow.
King-fishers and swallows often tarry there, while nearer
the upland it is the resort of song-sparrows, robins and cat-
birds. It is ever interesting to see the dark, Spanish gentle-

The Pond-Meadow. 89

man of a cat-bird, perched on one of the beams, and
perking his inquisitive head from side to side, or to hear at
evening a song-sparrow pour forth his sweetest melody,
while all the meadow lies before him. The barn-swallows,
when their nesting time is o'er, range themselves in rows
along those nerves of the railroad, the telegraph wires, and
sing that short song for which they ought to be famous ;
or they skim the velvety meadow grass, as if it were the sur-
face of a pond. Indeed the bay-meadow is so remarkably
pond-like in aspect, in the little capes and minor bays, that
the simile is quite a reasonable one.

Many of the tides overflow a considerable stretch of
the only road crossed by the trestle, and looking down I
have often seen the fish swimming over the road itself.
At night they skip and jump about most recklessly, and it
is no wonder that many of them meet their death, and that
the bitterns and the musk-rats have an ample supply.
Occasionally in the spring and fall, when the tides are
exceptionally high, the low lying roads in the vicinity are
flooded quite deeply, and the water reaches two or three
feet up the hay stacks on the meadows, so that a cat-boat
might easily be sailed among them.

At dusk, when the whippoonvills come flying across
the pond-meadow, near the junction of the trestle with the
upland, they go over the track instead of going between
the pilos, as would be expected of such cover seeking
birds. They call most energetically at times, and are not
even frightened by the rumbling train that comes at
evening over the trestle. I used to sit often on one of the
cross beams, and the train would go rattling by, and

90 J^he Pond-Meadow.

seemed every moment to be falling upon me. Each car
hummed a different tune, dependent upon the relative
looseness of its bolts, and sometimes a box would
blaze, and make the passage of the train in the dark, even
more impressive and weird.

As soon as it was gone the whippoorwills would call
again among the thick growth by the track, and often they
used the whip more lavishly than a Russian tax collector,
and chastised poor William from eighty to a hundred
times. But as the night progressed, and after the first
outburst of their dark and sombre soul was o'er, they sang
less often, and uttered the notes fewer times in succession.
They have also a second call that I have heard particularly
in June and July, and which is less loud than the whip-
poorwill, and resembles took-took-took. If you are not close
by, it is inaudible, and it probably is only a part of their
nearer conversation.

The whippoorwills add depth to the woods, their
voices are inseparable from the mist and dusk of night.
But even after they have commenced, the evening bell of
the wood-thrush may be heard as he tolls it solemnly in
the woods. The catbirds fly out in the dusk to the few
stunted trees that grow partly in the meadow grass, and
there is a blending of day and night songs — a space in
time, that reminds you of the material shore, where the
land and the sea do meet.

At the end of the calm summer days, when all nature
seemed so peaceful, the trestle was an especially fitting
place to spend the evening. The sun set plainly in view?
often aflame, and the wide expanse of sky was tinted a

The Pond-Meadow. 91

thousand hues. Sometimes at the close of day, a Monarch
butterfly came sailing high in the air, and borne on the
breeze to the opposite shore. The milk-weeds there sup-
plied it and its progeny with food, and it finally died in
some far away pasture. Wandering, wandering, always
wandering, never perhaps returning to the same field, its
home and its food everywhere ; its canopy, a bending leaf.
Year after year the butterflies sail on just the same, the
meadows are as green, the melody of the marsh-wren
reaches from summer to summer, but a mystery clothes
them still. Our investigations end in a sigh; a long
breath tells of the hopelessness of the inquiry.

The over-seeing power in the landscape gardening of
this world, has wrought on the principle of never making a
meadow creek conform to even the suggestion of a straight
line, and certainly there is nothing more winding, more
tortuous than a salt meadow kill. It seems unwilling to
leave the green meadows, and so lengthens the way; and
its meandering course may be followed through many turns
with the eye, aided by the taller plants growing on its
banks. This vegetation is of a different shade than the
sunny green meadow ; of a darker color — the upland wood
tint traced in serpentine patterns on the lighter green grass.
Even at dusk, with only a few remaining rays of light, the
carpet-like meadow wears a particularly vivid green, and
one is apt to look to westward, to make quite sure that the
sun has really set. The creek slumbers along between its
weedy banks, and is over-spread at evening with a host of
mysterious shadows. The drift-wood sails a long, lazy,
winding journey, and probably much of it never reaches

92 The Pond-Meadow.

the main arm of the sea, but returns with the incoming
tide.

On the bridges, where the creek and its arm cross the
road, the catchers of crabs often station themselves, and
tying pieces of meat, or fish heads, to strings, bait the wily
crustaceans. An entertaining party of three negroes occu-
pied the bridge one August afternoon, and laughingly told
how the crabs came to eat of a dead dog that lay in the
water just up the kill; and which kind chance, aided by a
string, a brick and a man, had brought that way. One
with a fishing line baited with a small piece of meat, had
captured all of the crabs, because his line was longest, and
he threw it nearer to the dog. He now and then slyly
inquired of his companions, how many they had caught
with their large pieces of meat. Then there was an
uproarious darky laugh, loud enough to frighten all of the
epicurean crabs from their chosen feast, and cause them to
run sidewise for half a mile.

The same afternoon, a little boy in a blue cotton shirt,
was crab fishing near the mill. He said that they knew
better than to take hold of his bait, which no doubt
accounted for the fact that he had secured but a single
individual that was retained in the net with which he hoped
to make further conquests. He ran about most comically
from place to place, holding his meat fast by the string, in
one hand, his net with the kicking crab in the other, and
all the while whistling, or mumbling about the crabs being
afraid of his bait. At last he shouted that he had seen a
" devil crab," and immediately began to divest himself of
his shoes and stockings. While he was thus employed, I

The Pond-Meadow. 93

went fishing, and drew a crab gently to the shore. Either
through my maladroitness or the evil disposition of the
bait, as avowed by the little boy, the crab ran away, before
the net containing the now troublesome captive, could be
brought into action.

So instead of crabbing we sat on one of the beams
from the old mill, and looked out over the meadow, which
at mid-summer is beautifully marbled. Nature gives then
a display in greens, with here and there patches of brown,
where the grass has gone to seed. Later comes the sam-
phire turned a bright red, a few asters, the sea lavender?
and the salt meadow golden-rod.

The clinking of the mower may be heard a long dis-
tance over the meadow, and the horses, the machine and
the men appear very small ; they seem lost on the ocean of
grass, as unimportant as a man in a row-boat on the sea.
The usual land perspective will not serve for the broad
stretch of meadows, and you are not sure how far away
objects really are.

Some of the farmers believe that an abundant crop of
meadow grass indicates a severe winter, as if the earth
brought forth a thick growth to keep itself warm. Where
man has shorn the meadow, the crows go looking for
grasshoppers, for they can catch them there much more
easily than in the longer grass.

The mosquitoes abound on the meadows at certain sea-
sons, and often drive away the crab catchers, whom I have
seen sitting with their heads drawn down in their coats, the
collars of which were turned up in order to leave the least
possible area open to attack. Though there are mosqui-

94 The Pond-Meadow.

toes on the meadows throughout the summer, still they
come more particularly at certain seasons, and when these
times are known, one's excursions may be planned so as not
to meet with them at the periods of greatest abundance.
In ordinary years, there are usually a few at the end of
May, a considerable visitation during the first days of July,
and again about the same time in August and September.
After the first of August, or at most the first few days in
the month, the mosquitoes become fairly numerous at all
times on the meadows, and for forty or fifty days it is well
to go armed with a branch of sweet gum or bay berry, that
may be switched about the head. The periods of greatest
abundance are about thirty days apart, the first and the
last being somewhat more, owing to the cooler weather.
Occasionally this order of appearance will be changed
slightly, as after the exceptionally warm winter of 1889-90,
when the swarm ordinarily coming in July, appeared in the
latter part of June.

Staten Island has been denominated "a mosquito-
infested Isle," and its natives are said to develop coriaceous
skins, only the fittest surviving However, the population
has increased ; the leathery skinned native often lives to be
very old and waxes stout if he gets enough to eat, and
talks back most energetically at all who have aught to say
against his home. It is true he has memories of mosqui-
toes, such as the visitation of July 3, 1863, when the
vegetables were left unpicked in the gardens for a week
and people wore mosquito net over their hats.

At the time of this plague two men were going to the
ferry landing; one of them with a net over his hat, the

Pond-Meadow. 95

other depending solely upon the energy of his arms, and
also, very likely, upon whiffs of tobacco smoke, to keep
the armed enemy at a distance. But like the little red
savages in Sindbad's voyage, they made up in numbers
what they lacked in individual strength, and he that was
provided with the net, led his unfortunate companion home
by the hand, where proper anointment and time reduced
the swellings.

In those pestiferous days, the cornice in rooms in daily
use became so covered by mosquitoes, that it appeared
black or brown, and after the third or fourth day, when
they commenced to die, they were swept up in numbers
on the floor. Though there have been mosquito years
since 1863 — 1882 being a representative of the series, still
there has been nothing equal to the great visitation.

Mosquitoes even attack turtles, and I have observed
about a yellow-spotted water-turtle, quite a cloud of them
that wished to suck his half warm blood. Sitting on a
fence one day, I saw a tiny ribbon-snake in the grass, and
running to see it closer, found that it had hidden away.
After a time it moved and glided rapidly through the grass
stems. I picked it up and put it in my straw hat, and it
was so small that it had difficulty in getting out again. A
mosquito discovered it and tried very hard to get its pro-
boscis in between the scales, but finally gave it up and
came to me.

Both the male and female mosquitoes congregate on the
flowers of the wild parsnip, and 1 have seen individuals
greatly swollen with the white juice that they had extracted
therefrom. They are also fond of the sugar mixtures that

96 The Pond-Meadow.

are spread on trees to attract moths, and sip the beer and
molasses as greedily as they do human blood. But mos-
quitoes in the winged state are not without enemies, and
in walking across the meadows I have been attended by
one of the larger dragon flies (Aeschna), that flew close
about me and captured them as my disturbing feet caused
them to rise. Sometimes the jaws of a darning-needle
may be heard grating against each other, as they open
and shut to receive the tiny Cukx.

The small Berenice dragon-fly, occurs in vast numbers
on the meadows, at certain seasons, and they are very
useful in devouring the mosquitoes at headquarters. At
evening, if it is calm, these dragon flies settle quietly on
the grass stems, where they spend the night.

Even at the time of their greatest numbers, the wood-
land and meadow scenes may be enjoyed by climbing a
tree, for the higher you ascend the less abundant is Culex.
The trestle itself is an excellent refuge from them, they can
find but little hiding there, and one walks, as it were,
through the meadow grass on stilts.

The bitterns were once numerous on the pond-meadow,
but persecution has driven most of them away. The gun-
ners stationed themselves at evening in a secluded place,
often by the side of the railroad embankment on the edge
of the meadow, and when the slow-flying bittern came
unsuspectingly from the woods over the opening, he was
fired at from below. A long tongue of flame shot upward
from the gun, the bittern sometimes screamed most
piteously if wounded, and the large yellow eyes flashed fire
as he lay helpless among the weeds. One summer served

The Pond- Meadow. 97

to drive most of these daik interesting birds, that made the
night more gloomy, away from the vicinity of the trestle.
They inhabited the meadows from April to November, and
at mid-summer, in the thickly-wooded low-lands, their
voices sounded like the barking of a puppy — a particularly
short puck-puck.

The gunner's dog seemed to delight in rushing pell-mell
into the meadow ditches where the bitterns fished and
frightening not only them, but the timid creatures that had
their dwelling there, with his ponderosity and prodigious
splashing. It was, as if a Minhocao — that gigantic worm-
like animal, reported to turn brooks from their beds in
Brazil — came plowing through one of our quiet rural
villages.

Dogs care naught for wet feet, though they will shiver
in cold weather, after coming out of the water, but if the
glee of the moment is any criterion, they seem as happy as
when lying in front of the fire. Perhaps the violent series
of shakes, that sends the water flying in innumerable
tangents from their bodies, has an exhilarating influence
that we humans, who are incapable of such gymnastics?
know not of. But there is no accounting for nature, and
the best we can do is to observe the facts, and say that
matters are thus and so ; that frogs delight in their hourly
bath, Bruno splashes in the ditches or sits by the fire, and
that Tabby is displeased if she even so much as wets her
feet. If she goes out in the dewy grass, she lifts her
feet comically high, so as to be as far removed from the
moisture as possible, and often she will shake her legs
violently. When there is snow on the ground, she finds

98 The Pond-Meadow.

walking particularly disagreeable, and the high lifting and
oft shaking of the feet become still more pronounced. But
I must say, as it were in parenthesis, that I once saw a cat
from my seat on the trestle, splashing about in the water,
and interesting accounts have been given of felines that
went fishing, and dove and swam with evident pleasure.
Nevertheless the average Tabby is averse to a soaking, and
the exceptions to the rule may be likened to that fraternity
of tramping naturalists, who spend hours in ponds, in
swamps, and in sundry swaley places.

Domestic fowls are also averse to standing in water,
and are generally very quick to seek shelter in a heavy
rain. If it is not a complete protection, they will slope
their backs considerably, so that the water may run as
speedily as possible down to their tails, and drip off on the
ground. The hen that goes out in the morning after a
light fall of snow, walks as if her own legs were borrowed
ones, and that she was learning how to use the newly
acquired members. She lifts her feet high, looks about
circumspectly, and utters a " my, my " sort of chuckle, and
presently goes back into the house or under the shed. Thus
do wet feet prove unpleasant to cats, to hens, and to the
majority of humans, who have invented rubber shoes so
that they may keep out of the water when they go in it.
Even barefooted boys have to exercise an effort to go
through a puddle, and if they are thinking about some-
thing else, their instinct is to go round.

There are times of the year when the earth seems to
have become semi-aqueous, and the hill-sides and the
vales are soaking wet, and the little brooks go wandering

The Pond-Meadow. 99

from their beds. Those who go into the woods only in
Summer, have no idea how inundated they are at the sea-
son of Spring, and the places where they walked dryly on
the mossy carpet, or sat on the scrawny roots, are covered
knee-deep by dark mysterious pools that reflect the tree
trunks from their placid surfaces.

Then again in the Fall, when even the village walks
are strewn thick with leaves, and the rain comes pattering
down for days at a time, there is no escaping the general
distribution of water, and by-and-by you feel it making its
way through your shoes. First one foot, whose shoe is
not quite as tight as its neighbor, becomes a little wet, or
perhaps you precipitate matters by stepping into a puddle,
and you feel the cool water come suddenly in. After that
you don't care ; you give over your former circumspection
and go plodding along in a mood of indifference. The
first puddle seems uncommonly cold, but after your shoes
and stockings get thoroughly saturated, it makes little
difference, as regards temperature, how many more puddles
you step into. There is certainly a limit of absorption,
and the water next to your epidermis, becomes warm, and
whether from its cosy retreat or from whatever cause, I
cannot say, it nevertheless prevents the general inrush 01
its cooler brother molecules. Thus it is the first wetting that
makes you draw your breath hastily between your teeth, and
after that, you wait for the water to get warm, for should
we not ever be turning our mishaps into pleasantries, or
at least make the best of the rain that is showered so
liberally upon us all ?

A pipe-line, bringing petroleum from Pennsylvania,

loo The Pond-Meadoiv.

runs across a little swamp on the borders of the meadow,
and there the bitterns often stationed themselves, and sat
silently watching the surface of the water. One summer
that portion of the pipe that was lain in the salt meadow,
was dug up for the purpose of being cleaned and boxed,
and placing my ear to its side, I could hear the slow flow-
ing oil within.

Where the meadow meets the upland there is a proces-
sion of flowers, and at mid-summer the array is particularly
splendid. The turk's cap lilies make its edge quite
gorgeous in August, and later the sunflowers cause it to be
still more gay. The upland has a golden fringe, the
meadow a yellow border.

The purple bonesets are conspicuous at the end of the
trestle in season, intermixed with the giant sunflowers and
the golden rods — the royal colors of purple and gold.
Probably no single species of flower gives a greater and more
wide-spread splendor to the low-lands, than does the purple
boneset. It stands often seven feet high, and as a little
man walks beside it, is it any wonder that he should open
wide his eyes at its glory, and marvel at the growth of a
single summer ? The equally tall swamp thistle, with pur-
ple flowers that match the bonesets in hue, and also
with a maroon stem, likewise grows along the edge of the
meadow. Its prickly arms stretch about it, and bid you let
it alone, or at least to handle it gently. " Go round," says
the thistle, " touch me not," and it sways gently in the
breeze. A bumble-bee burys itself as deeply as it can in
the soft heads, and the heads that have gone to seed are
pulled apart by the yellow-birds, and the downy-winged

The Pond-Meadow. 101

seeds fly away. Thus does the thistle have to pay a little
— have to give the yellow birds and the bumble-bees
something to help it along in the world, but it wants you,
to " go round."

The tall meadow-rue, the swamp milk-weed, the cardi-
nal lobelia and the Canada burnet, also blossom in turn at
the end of the trestle where the up-land meets the meadow,
and a few hundred feet away, the blazing-star grows in
abundance. The long spikes of purple flowers, blooming
from the top downward, are indeed " blazing-stars " in the
meadow.

There is always this narrow zone of plants and high
growing grass, close to the woods, and its appearance does
not suggest at first any such strife as we know is going on
there. Yet here the limits of certain species are most
forcibly shown, and we see, in spite of the peaceful aspect,
the continuous struggle among them. Occasionally there
is a lone tree growing further in the grass than the rest, a
poor stunted representative of its kind. If it be a sour-gum,
as is often the case, some of its leaves turn crimson by
mid-summer. This meadow tree is a favorite with the
birds ; they fly out from the edge of the woods, perch upon
it, and then fly back again. It is only at morning and at
evening, that a correct idea can be formed of their number.

This winding, turning line, where the upland meets the
meadow, must ever be an interesting territory ; it is so
broken, opening up such unexpected views; the line is a
zig-zag, and it has followed the pattern of the meadow
creek itself.

I made a roost on the border of the pond-meadow, in a

102 The Pond-Meadow.

swamp-oak and a young cedar, by placing a rail, that I
found in the grass, from one to the other. It was flat and
solidly fixed in the trees, and withal made a confortable
seat, where I might go in the late afternoon, and look over
the meadow. Perched above the grass as I was, I received
only the partial attention of the mosquitoes, though now
and then one flew away heavily laden.

From my perch the masts of the vessels on the Sound
were visible in the distance among the trees, and anon they
would appear across the open meadow, and move along as
if they glided through the grass itself. The large flowered
Sabbatia starred the grass in August at the base of the
tree, and meadow mice often rummaged about among
the pink blossoms. A catbird lit on the perch beside me,
one afternoon, a yard away, but it staid only a moment.
Once a white-eyed vireo came within arm's length, ex-
asperated that after all its scolding I had not become
afraid and gone away. The chickadees also visited the
oak tree, and in addition to the note from whence they get
their name, and the plaintive long-drawn t — d, gave expres-
sion to those more conversational utterances that they
bestow upon one another. Thus they said very plainly,
and as it were with a jerk, we-three, we-three, and such-as-
we, such-as-we. The chickadee is commonly a preoccupied
bird; is always busy about its own affairs, and gives you
but little heed. One chickadee is a cure for the blues; the
only time that it becomes plaintive is when it utters its
/ — d note, chiefly in the gladsome and sunny hours of
Spring.

At times a night-hawk appeared against the sun-set sky,

The Pond-Meadow. 103

and went through his gymnastics with the red clouds for a
background; and a harvest-fly would occasionally zie as
if half asleep, having lost all of the zest of the noontide
hours. A mink came one afternoon and sniffed about the
grass stems and bushes at the base of the tree, and once I
saw one cross the railroad track, and watched the serpentine
undulations of his long and lithe body, as he prowled about
the edge of a pool, spreading consternation among the
frogs. One almost despairs of any goodness in nature,
after looking a mink in the face.

The slanting rays of the setting sun often shed a mild
peaceful glory about the perch and many of the patches of
humble flowers in the woods behind. The sun gilds a par-
ticular leaf or branch in the woods and we then, as it were,
see the sun's shine, whereas its light is generally so omni-
present, that we do not take special cognizance of it.

As I watched from the perch, a haze often brooded
over the meadow and dimmed the view ; it nestled down
on the opposite woodland and made it soft and dreamy.
The country may have its roads and be mapped, but it isn't
thoroughly explored. There is no need of a far away
fairy-land, for the earth is unknown before us — the cow-
paths lead to mysterious fields. There is indeed a light of
fairy-land in the thick woods at sunset — a golden green —
and at mid-summer a myriad of minor songs, a constant
tingling, tingling. Though the names of the singers may
be mentioned, it does not spoil the enchantment or lessen
the charm.

Withal the perch was a pleasant place, and often I felt
akin to a bird, as if, perhaps, I might presently fly over the
pond-meadow in company with a bittern.

THE PARKS.

IT is reported that in old days, while the Indians still
lived on the dunes and open sandy ground by the
pond-meadow, that a settler of giant stature used to
stalk about the woods and clearings, and when the natives
saw his stalwart form approaching, they ran from fear.
This big, burly man was ever accompanied by a dwarfed
son, who was so inseparably attached to his gigantic sire>
that when the latter died, he also took to his bed, and only
survived him a few days. Thus the barren fields are not
without legendary interest — the giant walked there and the
Indians ran away. It is easy to conjure up the scene in
those twilight hours, when the globes of fluffy milkweed
seeds lend a glamour of uncertainty, and invite the sprites
and dryads of the woodland, to a shadowy procession.

There are five of these fields that were once cultivated,
but are now partly overgrown with briers and young trees,
and are surrounded on three sides by woody hedges, or the
woods themselves. My companion once called them " the
parks." In several of the fields there are small fairy circles
of moss, often quite exact in outline, and this same moss
(Polytrichwri) also grows in one of the parks, on the little
hills where corn was planted many years ago. The field

The Parks. 105

in consequence is quite regularly decked with these patches
of green, darker than the surrounding grass. Not only the
moss, but also white birches and bushes, have grown upon
these old corn hills, and the trees have attained consider-
able size.

In one of the parks there is a patch of wild strawberries.
The bright tinted leaves that come even in June, attract
your attention to the vines, and thus often lead to the dis-
covery of the berries. When the grass is low the berries
nestle close to the earth, and when it is high, they are
borne on long stems. If the ground has been burned over,
the berries grow luxuriantly, and seem to be riches springing
from poverty, the bright red fruit among the black and
burned stems. The best way to eat them, especially when
they are small, is to gather several and put them into your
mouth at once, the flavor is intensified thereby. But the
strawberry has its revenge and seems to say, " you cannot
part me from my calyx and bruise me so, without detection,
you shall have my blood on your hands," and so you go
away with crimson fingers.

There are generally too many berries for the birds to
eat. Nature is like a kind mother, she would give her
children plenty. This relation of the birds to the berries,
each deriving a benefit from the other, is also pleasing.

It seems rather dreadful to put one's big splay feet into
these little natural strawberry beds, and crush most clumsily
the nodding fruit, but we cannot walk without committing
great havoc, and I often notice where I have trodden down
he cities of the ants.

Later come the bunch cherries. The shining black

106 The Parks.

cherries remind one of bright new shoe buttons, but my
companion has said it was shameful to compare them to
such things, and Pomona would not be pleased if she
heard me say it. Indeed she did not forget to give them a
decided flavor — the flavor of wild cherries, who cannot
remember that ? You taste it to the bottom of your
stomach.

Pomona also provides huckleberries, and the cat-birds,
as a short cut to them, build their nests in the bushes, and
often scold me, if I appear at the other end of the patch.

Still later come the apples, borne on a few twisted
sprawling trees standing in one of the parks, and surrounded
by cedars, by oaks, and by other indigenous growth. I do
not think the fruit would bring a high price in the market,
but it is far too good to send there, it serves a better pur-
pose where it is. It is not always well to send all the
apples to market, or pick all the nuts from a tree — you do
not then get the best they can give you.

The ants run about under the apple trees, and what an
important matter to them is this falling off of the fruit.
Who can tell if many are not killed so ; they run a great
risk. Probably the universal eye beholds the meteors
falling to the Earth, as often as we see the apples descen-
ding to the ground, and yet men are not killed by them,
the land and the sea are so wide. Thus, perhaps, it rarely
happens, that an ant is crushed to death beneath an apple
tree.

Some of the apple trees look aflame with their fruit,
and the ground is speckled red. How pleasing are the
little dots on the rosy skin, they seem to be made for

The Parks. 107

beauty's sake alone. September is indeed the harvest time ;
the apples falling from the trees — the fruit of the Earth
constantly pelting their poor old mother.

When I compare mentally the early autumn scenes that
I can remember; call to mind the vivid red of the sumach
leaves, the dark blue lobelias, and that singing, singing,
that continuous song of the insects, I am impressed how
life for us all, is the same. That gradual change of the ages
does not effect the life of man more than it does the cricket
of this Summer, and if I had lived a thousand years ago, or
should walk the fields a thousand years to come, the scenes
would be the same.

It is good to ramble in the autumn fields, in one of the
barren sandy nooks where the sweet-fern grows, and where
a sad pleasant flavored joy, seems to pervade all about you.
With dextrous throws you bring down the apples, and
though they may be gnarled and puny, you eat them with
a relish, for they seem such free gifts from nature. They
come without the asking or the toil, like the persimmons,
or the strawberries in the field.

Autumn colors the barren ground vegetation very early
with the deepest dye, and as we are taller than most of the
plants that grow on the sand, we may look over them, and
thus get a wide and varied view. The Virginia creeper
runs flaming red along the ground, and the sumachs,
the cat-briers and the poison ivy vines, are most vividly
colored.

Perhaps the most curious tint of all the autumnal
show is the greenish-white leaves of the bitter-sweet
vine, that are speckled with yellow. They have an odd

108 The Parks.

appearance, for all about them the leaves have turned to
most vivid colors, while they alone have assumed so white
and ghostly a shade. In the chestnuts and some of the
oaks, the green color remains longest near the mid-rib, and
in the oaks it is often a deep olive shade, and greatly adds
to the beauty of the turning leaf. The wild cherry trees
color an orange red, and the seedling cultivated cherries
are flushed with red and look to be in a fever. The chest-
nut-oaks turn a light yellow, as do the chestnut trees and
the hickories.

There is a vividness of color in many of the leaves that
seems almost supernatural, and it is plain that we, who live
and grow old on the Earth, can never cease to wonder at
the yearly display. " Look," says the little boy, " at that
Virginia creeper," and in manhood he points again in
wonderment at the flaming red vine in the cedar tree.

The swamp-oaks grow in numbers in the sandy soil,
which is not very dry a yard or more below the surface.
It nevertheless produces an effect upon the trees, whose
horizontal branches start close to the ground, often resting
upon it, and whose leaves are finer and more incised than
when the trees stand in a richer soil. The cat-brier
(Smilax glauca) that grows on the dunes, also shows the
effect of the sandy ground, and the vines have larger and
more frequent tubers for the storage of moisture and
nourishment, than when they grow in wetter situations.

The semi- woodland pastures and barren fields are
favorite haunts of the doves, and often they coo in the
cedar trees, or come flying by with whistling wings. The
far-away voice of the dove ! — no bird note gives such

The Parks. 109

an impression of distance as the long ac-koo of the dove.

A few leaves still remain in November and fall from
the trees ghosts of their former selves. It causes a twinge
of regret to see a lone weak butterfly flit across a field on
its last excursion, or to see an old tree die ; but the drop-
ping of the dead leaves in Autumn, though a part of the
funeral procession of the year, does not bring the same
feeling. Yet it is as natural for the tree as the leaf to die,
and perhaps it is only that the dead leaves are so common,
their graves are everywhere, whereas the butterfly and the
old orchard tree, with its last apple, appeal more directly
to our attention — they are greater deaths.

Often on a Sunday, while seated in the sun on the
open sandy ground, I have heard the distant church
bells. I noticed that the tolling of the bell was regulated
by the breathing of the ringer, with each inspiration he
pulled the rope.

The best preaching of a church is often done by its
bell. They call it a relic of barbarism, or at least of the
times before watches and clocks, but they who speak thus
slightingly have never sat alone and listened to the distant
tolling of the bells. There is a rhyme, a cadence of the
bells, they talk out with their tongues and preach sermons
in sound.

The bells of Elizabethport across the kill, answered to
those of Mariner's Harbor, and their different tones seemed
to speak different desires. Like living things they too
seemed to have desires. Did they call come, come, or was
it hark, hark ? I interpreted it as the latter, for nature
would never have you run wildly about the world, she is

no The Parks.

sufficient, right about you. Morally she preaches the same
sermon everywhere.

There is indeed a solemnity in the meadows and in
the woods like the tolling of a bell — the tolling of a bell in
the night — and it is our own fault if the scene does not
touch us deeply.

THE TURNPIKE ROAD.

1HAVE rambled along the Turnpike road so often,
the experiences have become so blended together,
that now, to think over them is like the remem-
brance of a year. Time has rounded it all, and woven
and interwoven the scenes. Here and there a bright
colored bird perches on the trees, or an unknown moth
hovers over the blackberry blossoms in June, and the day
is vividly recalled, for it is most often the occasional, the
unexpected, that plows deepest furrows in the memory.
And then there are sunny hours that shine forth, though
they do not differ from the common passing ones by any
outward sign, yet their memory is ensured, for it is some-
times the glow within us, and not always external happen-
ings, that leaves a lasting impression. Thus there is a
Turnpike of memory that is not the same as the actual
road, and is different to each one of us. It is a gradual
growth, an accumulation of experiences and those memory
pictures that are never repeated in all of their details. If
we ramble along the highway we not only see what is
there to-day, but not being free to leave the past behind,
an array of trivialities and more weighty reminiscences,
come trooping by our side, for we have traveled before
with them on the Turnpike road.

112 The Turnpike Road.

The every-day wayside scenes — the common pictures
of common life, though they live long in the mind, yet
they are difficult to describe -with all of the reality that
they seem to wear. Perhaps the sun shines obliquely,
across the stony hill, upon the houses on the opposite side
of the way, and as the curtains wave in the open windows,
an occasional glimpse is offered of the little parlor within,
of the books arranged after a certain plan on the table,
and of the motto, knit in worsted over the door, for there
is a conventional parlor as there is a style in dress. Or,
perchance, there is an imprint of a child's naked foot in the
soft earth by the wayside ; or a little girl stops you and
inquires if you have seen her mother, and looks with
pitiful amazement when she finds you are not a family
acquaintance.

The houses crowd about the base of the round topped
hill, that overlooks the village and the bay. With its
steep rocky sides it keeps the dwellings from scrambling
up, so at least we can get a long, uninterrupted outlook
from its top. The Camberwell butterflies come from under
the loose stones on its side, in early spring, and their wings
rattle against them, as they fly with weak, uncertain flight.
The first butterfly of Spring, but a remnant of the old year
— all the yellow faded out of the borders of her wings dur-
ing the long winter sleep.

What a curious phase of existence is this sleeping and
awakening; to hibernate through all the winter days, and
to gradually be ushered into active life again by the
warming sun. There is a peace, a quietness and a mys
tery, that attaches itself to the lives of these lone waifs of a

The Turnpike Road, 113

by-gone year, and you remember all of the winter storms,
and marvel that these fragile beings should have survived
among the rocks on the hill-side.

When the butterflies leave their winter dwellings, then
mankind leave their dwellings too, and many an unfortu-
nate fellow creature labors with his goods on the Turnpike
road. It is amusing from an ultra-social point of view, to
see him moving. He stands in front of his house among
all his effects. He inspects a chair and then a table, and
is very solicitous concerning an old leather bag acquired in
his youth. It is as the actions of a squirrel; as if he
came out of his nest with a shaving in his mouth, and said :
" Sir, this is part of my bed, I would have you know that
I have property." But it is well to be solicitous concern-
ing an old leather bag or a shaving; we must love some-
thing or languish as an unhappy member of the school of
despair.

The stage coach once rumbled along the Turnpike,
carrying passengers and mail across the Island to the
New Blazing Star landing on the Sound. It was one of
the highways between New York and Philadelphia, and no
doubt many Van Cortlands, De Peysters and Bleeckers
admired the autumnal tints, or the greenness of spring, as
they jogged along the serpentine hills.

The boulders by the roadside, and a few old houses,
are the surviving monuments of the time, for with one of
two exceptions the ancient trees have been cut down. But
the Turnpike has still the same trend, and we may wander
from bay to kill, on the journey that has so often been per-
formed. But alas, our simple experiences do not bring all

114 The Turnpike Road.

that they should to us, we walk carelessly and unobserving.
The old red Turnpike road, even when tenanted by all of
fancy's picturings, is probably far less marvelous than any
single year of its truthful history which must remain
unknown.

If we slop along the muddy road, we are apt to think
of it only as muddy, and not consider all that it means.
It is well to call vividly to mind how a particular reach
appears at different seasons; how it looks on a bright
June afternoon, a dark November day, when frozen as
hard as adamant in Winter, and when it lies in muddy
stretches. Plod, plod, have been the foot-steps along it
these many years, and the dust and the mud — perhaps this
same mud, mixed for the one hundredth winter — has be-
daubed many a pedestrian. When we think of this we
straightway fall to dreaming, and walk on truly historic
ground.

The Indians Quervequeen, Aquepo, Sachemack and
their comrades, from whom Governor Lovelace purchased
the Island, once hunted where now runs the Turnpike
road. Little did they dream that the fanner's lumbering
wagon would slowly climb the hill-side, and meander along
where stood these almost insurmountable barriers of rocks
and trees, and little did they think either of the roisterly
laughter of the pic -nickers, and of those drunken and
hilarious shouts that are uttered by the savages of civili-
zation.

A murderer buried his wife in the hollow, and nearby,
the cemetery bell often solemnly tolls with funeral sadness,
as the carriages leave the highway and approach the open

The Turnpike Road. 115

grave. An old woman drove her vegetable wagon along
the road, and sat crying as she urged her horse onward,
for while she was in the village below, her husband had
died. " Ah ! my old man, he die, he die, while I down
there," and she pointed in the direction of the village with
her whip. Thus do the shouts of the revellers, the sobs
and the funeral bell, chime in the memory, and a wondrous
song is heard on the Turnpike road.

The wind blows and the dead leaves skip about sem-
bling butterflies in their motions. A mullein plant fresh
and green, has a favored situation on the sunny side of a
tree stump. When you unfold the soft downy leaves, you
think you see the face of Summer there, but it is only a
dream. Little insects have tucked themselves in the soft
warm bed, formed by the overlaying of these mullein leaves,
and thus await the sun. What marvelous faith have they,
everything is well to them, and though we complain of the
long, long, cold winds, yet they wait patiently in the mullein,
and go abroad on the sunny day that is sure to come.

In a hollow stump the sorrel grows, spreading its tender
leaves on the ground. It is protected from the weather
by the walls of wood, and the sun shines for a little while
each day through the open at the top ; but the leaves are
not quite so sour to the taste, not quite so potent, as those
matured in the open field.

How strangely the cold and stormy days follow close
to the bright and even warm ones. The little pools by the
wayside, look smiling and sunny on a spring day, when, lo I
on the morrow, they are frozen over, and their surface
becomes beautifully marbled. The curved lines and streaks

116 The Turnpike Road.

in the ice, would make a fair pattern for the laying out of
walks and rambles in a public park. When the snow falls
among the cedar trees, the effect is pleasing, the green and
the white make a pretty contrast. If the sun is shining the
scene is enhanced, for there are sun-snows, as well as sun-
showers. The little flakes descending among the dead
plants by the road-side, make a gentle rustle, as they fall
against the withered leaves. The close cropped pastures
look particularly beautiful, after the snow ; they present
one uninterrupted immaculate surface. Most of the fields,
however, have many weeds and tall grasses, which show
more conspicuously against the pure white background
than they did before. The crows appear blacker when the
snow lies on the ground than at any other time, and it is
also most profitable then, " to walk in another's footsteps."
Every man helps to wear the path, as musk-rats do in
the meadow-grass.

The foot-prints of the inquisitive dogs, that ran from
their masters, to where the mice had been in the night,
show plainly ; and the tiny tracks of the mice themselves,
about the dead stems of the asters and golden-rods, indicate
their efforts to secure the seeds.

You can see where one wagon has turned out to let
another pass ; even where they have stopped, perhaps to
talk and ask the news. The snow silently records the
wanderings of every creature, and tells of his purpose and
his vagaries. A dog led by some curious knowledge, or
by the memory of a former visit, before the snow, trots
across the field, to where a dead member of his species lies.
The snow records his great excitement; how he pranced

The Turnpike Road. 117

about the lifeless body, and went once quite close to its
head, and then ran away up the hill. Perhaps he was
touched by uncertainties and doubts, akin to human ones.

It is the general impression that there is little or nothing
to see of animal life on a winter ramble, and that during
the dead months, as they are called, every thing is truly
dead. There are books on nature, that take great pains
to point out this seeming, and to some extent, actual error
in the popular mind, but though it is true that there are
mice and birds, and even flies and moth abroad, yet it is
also true, that we walk over the snow as a man in the
depths of night along the main street of the village when
all are sleeping. It is not correct to call Winter the season
of the dead, but with much accuracy, we may say, that
it is the months, or days, of the sleepers. The brown
chrysalis wrapped in withered leaves and silk, is the purple
and green Luna moth of June.

The cows wander along the hill-sides, and eat bush
twigs and the dry oak leaves. They also devour the red
bunches of sumach berries, and sometimes, in Summer, the
poison ivy yine. The cow looks well among the bushes;
stands for us in place of the wild deer, and the other brow-
sing creatures that have gone. We would miss them
greatly, and a Japanese landscape is wanting much, in its
dearth of cattle. Sometimes she scratches her head with a
hind leg, and then the mild eyed cow loses her grace ; she
seems to be trying a new feat in gymnastics — a new one to
the race of kine.

The bells on their necks sound quaintly; they have
even a sylvan tone. A constant, tingling, tingling, as the

118 The Turnpike Road.

unseen cows meander with unsteady gait mid the birch and
cedar trees on the distant hill-side. A little bit of art adds
much to nature, and a great deal of nature enhances art.
The cow-bell would sound a discord on a city street.

A thick patch of woods by the road-side has lately been
cleared away. It consisted mainly of cedars and gums,
and a most luxuriant growth of smilax. The wild honey-
suckle grew there, and among many other birds, a cardinal
bred every year in the tangle. In speaking of the bird the
female is generally forgotten, or if mentioned, it is said that
she is brown only. It is true she is brown, but a beautiful
warm brown, and then her bill is pink as if to make a
noticeable contrast. Once while sitting in a cedar tree in
a swamp, one lit close by, within two yards, and there was
a good opportunity to see what a pretty bird she was.
When the males, in their scarlet coats, hop about on the snow,
you are impressed with the sight, you are not apt to forget
those winter days, there seems to be something unnatural
in all this bright color in the otherwise sombre thickets
of January.

While the woodmen were chopping the trees, a male
cardinal flew close about them, for the axe had sounded
so many days in his favorite haunt, that he became quite
bold. How surprised must be the brown thrushes, and the
many pairs of catbirds, that annually rear their young in
a tangle, when returning in hopeful Spring, they find the
ground cleared. There are many anxious twitterings then.

But it is the all-consuming fire, and not the axe, that
causes the most damage among the trees ; it is the smoke
curling up between the hills, that brings a deeper sigh than

The Turnpike Road. 119

does the rhythmic chop,chop,of the woodmen, as they strike
in alternate succession. The odor of the burning leaves and
grass, is like the fragrance from some giant pipe, and the
smoke goes upward in great clouds, as if some unseen
sylvan deity, were smoking the forest leaves. Thus he
puffs and puffs, and burns the withered leaves in the Fall;
and again in Spring after the snow, he lights his pipe once
more. Pussy willows, with their soft and downy catkins ;
azaleas, with their pink buds, and all the young and tender
plants that promised to array the fields with the freshness
of Spring, are burned by this sylvan smoker.

It commonly takes two years for a sufficient growth to
spring up to make a secure winter retreat for the rabbits.
But, even then, they are rarely secure, and they spend
much of their time in fleeing from their enemies. Their
ears are ever open; their noses twitch in their efforts to
secure the latest scent, and bunny has a thousand frights
and suspicions in a day. Nevertheless, if you stand still
in the road, at evening, she may come within a few feet,
probably mistaking you for some upstart of a tree. Maybe
she will make her toilet while sitting on her hind legs be-
fore you, seeming all the time quite unconcerned until,
perhaps, a slight motion, a gentle swaying of your body,
attracts her attention, when she bounds most wonderfully
down the road.

Unless a man is very hungry, it is a shame to kill poor
bunny, especially where her kind does not abound; but then
man is ever seeking a dinner, and it is only a sort of gas-
tronomic etiquette, that prevents many a mild faced little
tabby, from getting nearer to the fire than the hearth-stone.

120 The Turnpike Road.

It is a blessing that the road is not neat, that is, not
neat in the usual sense. The small trees, the black-berry
bushes, and a profusion of wild flowers that pathetically
bloom and die in their season, grow in many places along
either side. No grassy margin and painted fence, could
match the splendor of these natural hedges, and praises be
to him, who might have, but did not cut them down.

There are a few pits by the side of the highway,
where treasure was buried, near to a large stone and a
forked oak tree. At night a man came with a lantern and
dug as silently, as stealthily as he could, in great hope of
finding the secret store. He started, no doubt, when his
pick struck the hard stones, and the night and the mission,
made his pulse run high.

Houseman, and his negro servant, shortly after the
Revolution, dug several caverns into a steep hill-side, and
you may sit at the mouth of one of the caves, now sur-
rounded by undergrowth and trees, and see the passers-by
on the Turnpike. He found no gold, it is said, only dug
these holes that make quiet nestling places for lonely
ramblers, where they may sit on the dry dead leaves,
throw their coats open and let the sun beat warmly down.
Many wandering creatures take advantage of their shelter,
for they are favorites with the woodland tenantry.

Wild apple trees grow down the lane in the thicket.
Two of them bore an abundance of fruit last August;
great mellow apples, red and yellow streaked, and the
crickets and wild mice helped to devour them. When
you sit under the tree and bite deep into one of the apples,
disclosing to the light the brown seeds that have been

The Turnpike Road. 121

hidden in the white pulp, there seems to be a kind of
a zest accompanying the proceeding, a happy crackling as
if the apple enjoyed it also. That is the reason, it is held,
that the pulp is there ; it makes the fruit attractive, and
eating it, we throw the core away, and a seedling apple
tree grows by the lane.

Further to the west, is a small village, and the posters
of the Salvation Army bedeck the fences : " If sinners
entice thee consent thou not." The usual corner loungers
bask in the sun ; there is a busying in the little grocery,
and a sound of laughter in the tavern. Though boisterous
laughter may bring a good digestion and a happy hour,
yet it seems somewhat inconsistent with nature. Do we
ever see great levity in the hedge-row ? The bird sings
merrily in the tree, while his mate brings a luckless cater-
pillar to feed the young, and with one look we see the
dark and light spots in the mosaic. The average is not a
joyful scene, neither is it a wholly sad one, but it is like
our own minds with their cloudy and sunny hours, with
their songs and discords.

It is pleasant to buy crackers in the little grocery at
evening, at the close of a long May day, and go eating
them on your journey, or when seated on the fence, while
the birds are singing. The Italian laborers come in a
group along the road with their large variously colored
bundles slung on sticks over their shoulders. The road is
red, the dog-woods are decked in white blossoms and the
sun gilds the edges of the black clouds behind which it is
setting.

There is a mysteriousness about the commonplace road

122 The Turnpike Road.

at evening, and the pale geranium blossoms, that nod by
the wayside, seem but the ghosts of flowers. The grave-
stones show plainly on the hill, and twilight, death, bird's
songs and evening rambles, mix themselves into that in-
explicable maze, which makes the beauty and the substance
of a dream.

The days of May and of June are the main-springs of
Summer. To go afield, is like attending a grand show, a
visit to a large museum, and walking hastily through its
halls. There is so much, that you become bewildered, it
makes your head ache. The plants grow up and bloom,
while it seems you have been but around the field. At
night the fog comes as a wall of mist up the bay, and the
trees are dripping wet; and at noon the sun is hot, and
the leaves and branches grow — fairly bound along the path
of life. They come to the uphill, about the first of July.

There are many dwellings along the Turnpike road,
built long ago, but now deserted, and falling into ruin.
Their grounds offer pleasant rambling places, for they seem
experienced bits of mother earth ; first wild, then culti-
vated, and now running wild again. Like those who have
traveled much, they seem capable of giving advice. It
may be a hard saying, but it is a truth, as gleaned from
them, that there is too much hope. Men are unreasonably
buoyed up in spite of facts — think that no doubt all will be
well with them, and so plant many fields and build innum-
erable structures. But nature has no care on which face
the copper falls, because it makes no difference to nature
and it is the same with every artificial hope, it is as likely
to end one way as another.

The Turnpike Road. 123

Nature is a house breaker. She will pull the windows
out, knock down the doors, topple over the chimney, and
will finally have the clap boards off, or the stones from out
the wall.

These old broken down buildings, along the road, were
erected mid great expectations, and their blank, dark win-
dows, now look solemnly across the sunny fields. They
lost their soul when they lost their tenants. The smoke
from a chimney seems to tell more of life to us, than even
the swallows that fly swiftly from its flues.

Sometimes these houses are partly inhabited, one or
two rooms will be occupied by an individual, who seems
to have borrowed his character from the domicile — to be
as forlorn as the structure in which he lives. The red-
peppers and seed-corn are hung under his porch, and the
family dog and cat, and the chickens, bask in the sunshine,
on the warm dry boards by his door. He will tell you
stories of long ago, when he was a young man, which he
says, "wasn't yesterday." He was jolly and gay then,
for he used to visit Cedar Grove nigh every night with
David Playmore. He could fiddle, and there wasn't any
fun without music. But alas, for these orgies, David's
head began to twitch — he was always a nervous fellow —
and the doctor, who was unfamiliar with Cedar Grove, said
he tied his necktie too tight, it stopped the circulation.

So the old man chuckles ; the memories of his revels
amuse him still, and yet he is half ashamed of them, does
not speak so openly as when he tells of the cut on his
hand, which he got while chopping wood.

It is pleasant at lunch time to seek the sunny side of an

124 The Turnpike Road.

old weathered building, or hay stack, where you may eat
your sandwich, and look out over the meadows with their
silver streak of a kill, for where the Turnpike road runs on
the crest of Long Neck, there is a wide and uninterrupted
view. The far away houses, the stacks of hay, the light
and dark spots caused by passing clouds, the lines of trees
running down to the meadow edge, and the lone cedars,
sycamores and apple trees, twisted by the wind, are all
interesting. There is no colder place in Winter than these
same salt meadows, for the north wind has an uninterrupted
sweep across them, and every little grass stem seems to
wave it on. " All grass is dead now," says the wind, " and
I have no heart, let all things freeze on the meadow
to-day."

We are in truth, as much of nature as the grass on the
meadows, or the hardy little mice and the song-sparrows
along its edge, and so we ought to congratulate ourselves,
include our own persons in the praise that we bestow upon
them for their endurance.

These same song-sparrows should put our occasional
unhappiness to shame. They have not only a living to
gain, but they are beset by powerful enemies; a hawk,
that pruner of the avian world, must needs catch some of
them sooner or later. The early colonists, who expected
Indians behind the tree-trunks, lived in much the same
trepidation.

The tightly-stretched telegraph wires, along the road,
are played by the wind ; the passing breeze is turned to
music, and speeds you on your way. To the ear placed
on the pole it hums peculiarly, as if far away beyond the

The Turnpike Road. 125

hills, there was an endless bridge, over which a heavy train
was ever passing, and you heard the distant rumbling
sound.

The stage coach has not been put entirely by ; it comes
rattling along drawn by three horses abreast— a ponderous
vehicle formerly used in the crush and the jam of the city.
Now in its old age it is granted a probation, and having
proved itself unsmashable, is allowed to spend its declining
years on the Turnpike road. Before the time of Governor
Tompkins, the highway ran differently than it does to-day ;
it passed between the old Ridgway mansion and the Fresh
Kill meadows, to the only house beyond. There were but
three or four families living on the Neck then, and they
enjoyed almost an insular seclusion, like the lone farm
house that now stands on " Price's Island," that curious
rise in the meadows, near the Fresh Kill. It gathers its
chief interest from its peculiar situation. Even the house-
hold cat seems wilder there, and runs up an apple tree
when you approach, and the poor disabled, ridge-backed
horses, stare like creatures of another world, for they are
seldom disturbed in their solitary haunts. The salt meadow
roundabout has been the occasion of endless bickering and
dispute; the unconscious waving grass has caused much
unhappiness among the inhabitants. There was once
sufficient meadow for all, and the assessors did not consider
the entire acreage in their levy. The marsh-wrens and the
cackling dabchicks, alone claimed absolute ownership.
But with the fences came the unhappy quarrels, and among
the inhabitants of a scantily-settled district, disagreements
are most distressing. The solitude nurses their woe, it

126 The Turnpike Road.

changes their character and leads to perpetual broodings.
As the wind that sighs in the pines at the door seems to
attune with the feelings, so all nature goads them on, and
the quarrel extends from the line fence to the straying cat-
tle and the use of the lane.

There are many warm, sandy fields on Long or Karle's
Neck, often divided by hedges that have grown unkept
these many years. Clumps of sassafras and a variety of
other trees, have sprung up in these abandoned places, and
give them a peculiarly pleasant character. The yellow
and the pitch pines, have lain a carpet of needles, and the
paths that wind over it, are often dry and attractive in
Winter.

The Indians once lived on the dunes, for their imple-
ments are scattered about, and you find the arrow-heads
and hammer-stones where they left them. There is a cer-
tain charm in picking a flint from the sand, and knowing
that the last human hand that held it before your own, was
that of a wandering Indian.

Winter ought to be warmer to those who have built
their houses in these sandy situations. The low persimmon
trees, the pines, the open woods, and here and there the
barren spots that are always dry, seem to coax Winter not
to be too severe, and are ever beckoning to Spring. Some
of the persimmon trees retain their dried calyxes, and they
serve to show all Winter the fruitfulness of the tree, as
shavings tell of the carpenter's industry.

Many a happy day has been spent wandering on the
Neck, the rabbits occasionally skipping about over the
clumps Q{ Hudsonia, or poverty-grass, as it is called on

The Turnpike Road. 127

Cape Cod. It is amusing to watch a little dog pursuing
" Molly," she outstrips him quite easily, and he is so earnest
that he will run quite upon you before he is aware, and
then retires abashed. All his energy is centered in his
sense of smell, on such occasions. You can see that he
sees nothing, only smells his way along the trail, and bays.
The voice of a dog after a rabbit.

On these dry dunes, mid the cedars, the pines and the
Hudsonia, the sunny days seem one long song; there is a
cadence rising from the earth, and the heat dances in a
shimmering light along the warming ground. A sad un-
speakable joy, a tingling of the nerves, an awful sense of
the unknown, settles calmly but profoundly down.

REFLECTIONS.

THERE is no jesting in nature ; she may seem glad or
sad, but she is earnest. A trifling man in the field
cannot fool the crickets; and yet there is much
misrepresentation in nature. I see the hickory trees turn
yellow and brown in Autumn ; they would have me believe
that they didn't bear any fruit this year. God's creatures
often appear to one another what they are not — they are
tricky. Harmless snakes mimic poisonous ones, the sem-
blance of many moth to yellow leaves is striking ; while
spiders inhabit white flowers, and yellow spiders occur on
yellow ones. Thus they escape their enemies, or prove the
hidden enemies of others. The operations of nature are
akin to those of Wall Street. When we walk in the woods
we cannot be sure of what we see, so much is done for
appearance sake alone, the truth is hidden mid a pageant
of bright petals. Circe is ever abroad, and the milk-weeds
lure flies and bees and hold them captive till they die.

Any action that is possible is permissible in nature ; she
even tolerates murder. Let those who can, do, is the
motto in the fields. The crimes that a lone man may
commit in the woods, or on the sea shore know no law,

Reflections. 129

and even seem without the pale of the conscience. If he
crushes a snail, or barks a tree nature does not revenge
herself.

Yet the ants have a standard of justice among them-
selves, that is a conscience as far as their community and
species go. Also there is a law among crows, they do
not destroy each other's nests. Our own justice hardly
steps outside of human affairs, but we owe something to
animals. The cow in the field appreciates kindness, and
we should strive to please the more helpless creatures, as
well as our friend and our kindred.

Perhaps the chief value of going afield, is that we are
judged by a true standard — a dollar isn't worth a cent
there. Death is a great leveller it is said, and so is nature's
influence. In the city a man is surrounded by artificial
conditions and has the help of his fellows, but in the open
country he comes more to the realization of himself. A
lone journey in the meadows or a day spent silently in
the woods, is sobering, and many suffer considerably when
thus imprisoned with themselves. They cannot find any-
thing of interest in the meadows, they complain of quiet
in the midst of warfare, and are generally fretful.

A man who concerns himself principally with the arti-
ficial, and who thinks that the world is for stirring busi-
ness alone, misses entirely that divine halo that rests about
much in nature. To him all things are certain. He can
have a particular tree cut down or an ox killed at com-
mand, and he is ever busy spinning a web of affairs. You
see him hurrying across the street with rapid strides, for
hasn't the Valley railroad declared a dividend! Such

130 Reflections.

things must be, but they are not the safest springs of
pleasure. We must not put by entirely the chippy singing
in the apple tree, or the white clouds, for nature declares
a dividend every hour — the dew-drops always pay par to
the summer leaves.

If we could constantly bear in mind many of our ex-
periences, most of us would be quite content to remain in
some sequestered nook for the length of our days, but the
freshness of the smart wears off — we forget, and are burned
again.

Those who are unconsolably miserable, and feel that
they have all of the ills, should inspect the lilies of the field.
There is hardly a perfect one among them, and no doubt
they would often be glad to spin and reap, if they might
thereby forget the gnawing caterpillars that devour their
leaves. There should be many doctors among the plants.
I meet with ailing individuals that would gladly consult
specialists on stamens and pistils.

We sometimes get a wider view of our homes by going
afield. Like Lynceus we see well at a distance. The
chief value of an excursion is often the last step across the
threshold. We walk twenty miles in order to get acquaint-
ed with our family cat. We walk and walk, and think we
are going to discover something of interest; we go a long
way from home and find ourselves finally in some man's
back yard, where he is already at home. Stanley in all his
explorations always found some one at home. The black
men fed him with vegetables from their kitchen gardens.

Our enjoyment of a place is often proportioned to the
effort we have made to get there. The further it is away

Reflections. 131

and the longer the tramp, the sharper our eyes become,
and vivid is the mental picture we carry away. One of
the chief advantages in visiting different meadows and pieces
of woodland, is, that it whets our perception, we are more on
the look out. But probably there isn't a ten acre wood-
lot even near home, that has been thoroughly explored.
If you think there is, go through it again, and see if there
isn't a nut tree, that you have before passed by without
discovery.

It is often well to select some circumscribed piece of
mother earth, and watch it particularly throughout the
year; comparing it with the other fields to which occa-
sional journeys are made. The rhythm of the warmer
months is broken by scattering our observation too wide.
There is a cadence of the year ; one continuous song
changing gradually and almost imperceptibly, and of
which each musical creature sings in turn his part. The
first outburst of melody of the song-sparrow, the black
birds in the swamp, the crickets, the katy-dids, the z-ing
of the harvest flies, and the late fall notes of the birds
going southward ; these and many more, all come as signs
of the seasons, and mark for each patch of mother earth,
the progress of the year. They make a beautiful and
pathetic march, and are best seen and most forcibly im-
pressed, by looking steadily at the same acres. If we stand
with open eyes, there is no pageant so varied as the march
of the warmer days. But the rapid change that charac-
terizes Summer is gone in Winter. There may be snow or
there may be none, but we have generally to look close to
note that a few more dead leaves have blown off an oak

132 Reflections.

on the hill-side, or that the blackhaw berries are a little
more shrivelled than they were a month ago. When the
ban of Boreas is o'er the land, and the leaves huddle to-
gether in the depressions in the woods, as if they would
keep one another warm, and the snow lies on the earth,
then a view of one field, of one hill-side, is so similar to the
view a month hence, that one falls back on the calendar,
for the want of any change betokening the march of time
out of doors.

Nature does indeed will us strange fortunes, but gen-
erally she is tolerably kind, and if we do not try to visit
the North Pole, or spend a Summer in the Sahara, we
may live along without any marked break in our mutual,
friendly relations. We may go musing calmly in the
meadows, in the woodland, and along the country lanes,
and hark to those inward murmurings of fancy that cause
a strange array of natural and human transactions, to move
in turn over old Staten Island, that seems to sleep so
peacefully to-day beneath the autumn sun. Yet no doubt
the present is quite as unquiet and wrangling as many a
bygone year, but over the past there always rests a halo,
and time, like a kind critic, idealizes for us the jumbled
maze, and only gives forth a poetic tincture of the whole.

The patroons and their Bouwries, the Peach war, the
British troops quartered on the Island, and the domestic
scenes in the Dutch and Huguenot families, wear to us a
garment of quiet and pleasing interest, though its seams
chafed harshly enough, many of those who wore it of old.

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